Pixel travel docking station with Linux OS support

1

Building a travel docking station for my phone, currently a Pixel 6 Pro. At home I use a DisplayLink Dell Docking station which provides display out and full size keyboard and mouse as well as audio out. This provides a desktop experience IMO.

My previous travel display out option was a WavLink display adapter. Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard and or game controller.

My every day carry kit includes a thumb drive and 1’ USB cable which I use a portable version of Scrcpy This works well when there is a PC I can just plug in.

Wanting more capabilities and a better keyboard when traveling without carrying a laptop I decided to get an Orange Pi 800, to me this is a 385g light weight dock that is a keyboard and with a mouse seems to work to replicate my home set up which weighs in around 1000g.

The Orange Pi OS perhaps based on Arch? is not my first choice but neither are the other optimized OS for the 800. I installed to the eMMC Orange Pi Unbuntu. Knowing I have a good SD card and prerequirements to install OS to the 64 GB eMMC I started looking at Privacy and Security options.

Chris Titus Tech shared a video on installing Ubuntu server on the 800 as if it was no problem. I have not got Ubuntu server to install. I got a good image, it will not boot from the SD card, then I ran nand-sata-install as I did to write to the flash memory, went through the options to install Ubuntu server and after what looked like a successful install, OPI Ubuntu was not even erased off the eMMC. Perhaps in a follow up video a solution will be provided.

Planning to write to the eMMC flash memory Orange Pi Debian 11 then go through Stripping Debian maintaining full use of the Orange Pi 800 and the ability to run Scrcpy. I much rather work with a server and build it up. Considering stripping out the desktop environment and using Awesome windows manager.

2

Why not just get a 12" Laptop?

I have both the X270 and X280, the X270 can use up to 32 GB memory, the X280 has soldered memory but quad-core CPU, and they are both around 1100g in weight.

They are pretty inexpensive, you can get them as low as $100 on the 2nd hand market.

I do also have a 7" PGD-Pocket, which is a “phone size” laptop with track point and keyboard, it’s over all better than using a phone, but it’s still too small too work on for longer periods of time.

3

Considered a new 12" laptop or a new tablet, either would need to be more powerful then the Pixel 6 Pro for me to justify the weight and cost. I have a couple small lap tops neither will I tote around daily, neither out performs the Pixel. I should gift them to someone.
I considered going with just a single board computer in a case and then coming up with a keyboard solution. The Orange Pi 800 is a keyboard case.
The performance of the OPi 800 is lacking but it gives me the connectivity I am looking for.