Tourmalet Media Player Dev Kit

Tourmalet - A portable media player development kit
Skill LevelArea of FocusOperating System
Advanced3D Printing & Modeling, Education, Embedded, IoT, ToysAndroid

A development kit to build a handheld device and touchscreen media player:

  • Once assembled from the pieces in the kit, the media player will serve as a handheld Android device
  • Impress your friends with a hand-built Android device that can serve as a wireless communicator, music player, social media portal, etc.
  • Usable as a touchscreen development kit to allow touchscreen UI and GPIO access for other projects

Project Tourmalet started as an internal Synaptics project to help our engineers learn more about the Synaptics Touch-Display Driver Integration (TDDI) technology. This pioneering technology allows for high-performance in-cell touchscreen display technology by co-locating the capacitive touch sensing circuits directly in the same silicon as the display driver circuits.

As a service to the Maker community, Synaptics has now made this advanced display technology available on the DragonBoard™ 410c development board, a widely available, 96Boards open hardware platform. Furthermore, because we ourselves like to make usable platforms, we have released all the instructions and documentation to allow the Maker community to build a complete stand-alone Android device using the Synaptics TDDI FHD touchscreen.

The original intent for the Tourmalet kit was to create a design kit that was straightforward enough that even a recreational hobbyist could assemble it themselves, just like putting together a Lego design or Ikea furniture. Additionally, aside from the touchscreen display, we also wanted to make sure most of the components (such as the battery, processor platform, etc.) were easy to source. We even tested the casing design to be printable using hobbyist-class FDM printers (not just the high-end objet printers).

NameTitleCompany
Andrew HsuDirector, Concept PrototypingSynaptics, Inc.
Kipling InscoreSenior Software EngineerSynaptics, Inc.
Mark HuieSenior Mechanical EngineerSynaptics, Inc.
Bjorn HovdenPrincipal System EngineerSynaptics, Inc.
Jerry ShaoSenior Software EngineerSynaptics, Inc.