Raspberry Pi and Motorola Atrix Lapdock and...

To begin with, I am typing this blog entry on this setup!

Hopefully by now everyone has at least limited knowledge of the Raspberry Pi micro computer.

Here is some info if you haven't much knowledge on the subject.

Now some very clever people out there discovered some very useful features of a discontinued cellphone accessory, the Motorola Atrix 4G Lapdock.

The lapdock is a screen, keyboard, battery pack, USB hub in one nice ultraportable laptop case.  Specifically it has USB out for its hub, the keyboard and trackpad are on the hub.  The screen is a HDMI display.

Well guess what, the Pi has HDMI out, and USB plugs.  All you need are the correct connectors.

I used this blog to sort out what connectors I need.  I was able to find an ebayer that had all the parts I needed for a reasonable price (not a package, but one shipment from China).


The Lapdock has male micro usb and HDMI plugs where the cellphone would dock in.  I picked up a 12" micro HDMI extension cable (male-female) and 12" micro USB extender.  I also picked up a microHDMI female to HDMI male adapter, and the same thing in a USB adapter.

USB 2.0 type A male to Micro USB B type 5pin female Connector Adapter convertor,

HDMI Male to Female Micro HDMI socket adapter convertor, 

50cm Micro USB 2.0 type 5Pin Male to micro USB Female tablet extension cable, 

HDMI 1.4 D type Micro HDMI Male to Micro HDMI Female M/F Extension Cable 30cm

The Raspberry Pi has a micro USB power plug...but the latest version can take USB power through the normal USB ports also...and this allows the Pi access to the Lapdock hub/keyboard.

So with two wires, the Pi is powered and sends video/audio to the Lapdock.

I installed the Raspbian Wheezy (to be specific, I used the NOOBS file for installation) and it recognized all the hardware immediately.   The only thing that didn't work out the box was HDMI audio...but that is a simple edit...here.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

  - uncomment the hdmi_drive=2 entry

  -save the edited file by using...

Press Control-x
Press y
Press [enter]

I will admit, I did the Raspbian installation using a standard keyboard/mouse, HDMI display (my cables weren't in yet)...but I didn't do any changes to the installation other than the audio edit to get the Pi to access the lapdock.

Now the why portion of this other than because it is there...

I intend to install RTL-SDR on it with my TV USB dongle and maybe GNU radio...

...for later...