Making a Computer Monitor out of an iPad

People want to upgrade their iPhones and iPads when the new versions are released. This happens pretty much every year. Where do the old devices go? Recycled or resold, often. Much recycled e-waste ends up shipped somewhere it's not disposed of properly. So whenever I can make something useful out of something that isn't useful and reduce the burden on e-waste dumps, I jump at the opportunity. So when I saw that I could make a display out of an iPad, I was excited, because I knew that there'd be quite a few of these available in the condition I needed them in.

The idea is fairly simple. On the iPad 3&4 (and possibly others), the screen runs on the eDP signalling protocol (which is basically just Displayport). So, in theory, you can just pass through a Displayport signal to the screen and then drive the backlight like normal.

AbuseMark has made one such adapter. The only active logic on it is for controlling the backlight and power state. Otherwise, it's a direct passthrough from a full Displayport plug straight to the 51 pin connector of an iPad screen. Because I'm talking right to the screen, I can drive it at the native resolution of 2048x1536. So this is the idea behind the project. In addition to doing that, I'd like to put the screen back into the iPad and wire the power button on the chassis to the adapter board. Wouldn't that be neat?

So I bought an iPad from eBay. The condition was unspecified, but the screen appears uncracked. I opened the iPad up and plugged the screen into the adapter. And...

I emailed AbuseMark about this, and they said it was likely a bad screen. Just my luck. So I got one with a known good screen. This new iPad was Activation Locked, so it was perfect for me to take apart.

I opened the iPad up and plugged the screen into the adapter. And...

This screen is bright and beautiful. Perfect. So now we know it works. Next, we have to gut the iPad. I decided to gut both of them just because. This is actually really hard because of the gallons of adhesive they use. I was able to get most of the stuff out without breaking it.

The adapter is designed to sit right at the edge of the screen. Unfortunately, we cut quite far into the ipad case to get to the plug. This does, however, give us the benefit of hiding the plug itself behind the screen. Not only that, but we don't cut into any of the actual aesthetic of the iPad itself. It still looks like an iPad. I hope. When I wrote that sentence I hadn't actually measured out the cut yet.

So I taped it up and took my dremel to it. Cutting through the top bezel took a bit because it's reinforced. But getting through the rest of it was easy. I only had to make two cuts - I perforated the third lateral cut and just snapped off the casing.

It's not a pretty cut, but it's good enough to make the board fit with the screen.

Now I needed a way to control the board without having to go back to that tiny button on the adapter board. Originally, I was going to use the power button on the iPad. But I decided to go with the home button for two very important reasons. First, it's easier to press and in a easier location. Second, it's much easier to solder to. If I wanted to use the power button (or any of those buttons, really), I'd have to solder to this ribbon:

I discovered that far left is the power button and far right is the common ground. But I also discovered I wasn't willing to struggle with such small solder points. So I just soldered to the home button contacts instead. Much larger, much nicer.

These get routed under the screen and soldered to the button on the board.

Good enough. Finally, I secured the front glass with double sided tape (after cleaning it, of course), and turned it on. I was so thrilled to see it turn on!

Windows tried setting it to 200% scaling, but I set it to 150% because I wanted more screen space and less scale-changing lag while dragging windows between screens.

Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out. I might do this a second time with a HDMI adapter board so I can plug it into my camera as a monitor. But, until then, I'd consider this a success.

But what am I going to do with all of these iPad internals? I'm going to recycle the battery for sure, but I'm not sure what I'm doing with the rest of it just yet. I'll think of something and make it another month's post for sure.