By process of elimination I diagnosed what was causing the lapdock to think it was open or closed.
I started with the Battery, audio, keyboard and then the purple ribbon.
The culprit is the purple Ribbon!
Once that was identified I switched back to the circiut board from the other lapdock and isolated JUST the purple ribbon. Yes, this was it.
I then removed the other end of the purple ribbon from they keyboard tray:
I am going to put back together the other lapdock and then see about..... you know what I am just going to leave it here and someone else can figure out how to trick it into thinking that the magnet is attached...
Aside from jumping the ribbon onto itself or cutting it which I don't want to mess with ATM.
Ok so, I took apart the top back plate of a second lapdock and started troubleshooting. I did not mess up any of the PCB or wires it seems. I have discovered what the culprit of the non-working screen is!
Here is a video explaining it, followed by photos of some of my troubleshooting process.
Here with the lapdock lid closed. Screen is OFF
Here with the lid up the screen is ON
Wired using the external LCD panel and alien HDMI/USB Pigtail to troubleshoot.
I thought to be clever and try this below... no dice. The magnets in the top of the lapdocks LCD have a certain +/- Is my theory... the Keyboard to keyboard magnets will not work.
Underside of the keyboard panel:
Here is the side that would be underneath your right hand:
Here is the side that would be underneath your left hand:
Next step is to jury rig this SOB to make it think the lid is open!
See the first two posts to get an idea of where I am coming from.
Currently I have an issue with the screen not turning on.
Citing the RPi build I was hoping to fix it. See build post here: RPi Build
The issue where the screen will not turn on is perplexing because it did work in this configuration, naked without being in the 'cradle' which houses the MICRO-HDMI/USB Male ends.
When the MICRO-HDMI/USB were in the cradle and you adjusted the angle of the cradle it would turn the screen on/off. This to me indicated that there was a physical toggle?
However now. The board will power up when connected to the MX2 creating conductivity from the Orange wire I soldered to the PIN 3 ( ground/brown ) of the HDMI/USB CX. If the MX2 is unplugged I will not get conductivity to anywhere but the immediate leech solder to the HDMI PIN3.
As you see above ^^^^^^^^^^^ the metal strip connecting the two hinges. Which completed some sort of circuit.... when the cradle was at its full-open.
I am now attempting to close that circuit.... unsuccessfully so far...
It is possible I messed up the board... EMI ? I will be taking apart another lap-dock and troubleshooting piece by piece.
I am on a mission to re-purpose the wondrous Motorola Atrix Lapdock.
I am using it with a iMito MX2 successfully. I am running Finless 1.5 720P ANDROID. Also am able to boot into Ubuntu via VNC and also boot into it off a MICRO-SD via recovery workaround.
I had some issues with the MICRO USB cable which I fixed by soldering the GRND to the Sense pin. ( 5th pin to 4th pin on the male end that connects into the MX2 MICRO USB labeled slot.
My current project is to use it as a portrait mode 2nd monitor for my lap dock for coding/CLI.
