NUC's eDP port issues

There is some issue with the eDP port. First it has only 2 lane, second the maximum Vin which is around 19V is simple not enough for drive the LED strings on the panel. We need 48V. So what should we do? There is a few LED driver IC on the market, but most of them not supported the 48V, just under. After a research I found the perfect candidate: Texas Instruments TPS61199. It has a wide range input from 8V-30V and 60V output, can handle 8 LED strings with max. 70mA each (we need only 6 and 20mA). That's more than enough.
If we got everything on board we need a cable from the LCD panel to the motherboard. It's a little bit tricky, I'm not sure right now the motherboard's eDP port can actually drive the panel, I mean the 2 lane is enough or not. Theoretically is enough for 2560x1600 with 30Hz. So I don't know if we should use a normal displayport or not. And because of this I designed a breakout board PCB.

The plane is to connect the eDP cable(previous post) to the breakout board, set some jump wire and connect the LED driver board then the LCD panel's IPEX plug too. If this is not working somehow I just replace the eDP cable with a normal displayport cable, then reset the jump wires. That's it.

What about the LCD panel?

Good question. I didn't talk about this before. There was two candidate. One of them is a Macbook Pro Retina 13.3" panel. The other one is from the new Chromebook with 2560x1700 resolution. The macbook's panel is a Samsung LSN133DL02-A02 or LG LP133WQ1-SJA1 with a resolution of 2560x1600. There is some known issue with the LG's one like IR, but Samsung is okay. The Chromebook's panel, LP129QE1-SPA1 is a cheap alternative and if you thinking about building something similar you should buy this one. Seriously it's 5 or 6 times cheaper! But I already have a disassembled top lid from a Macbook (A1502), so it's an obvious choice. Another plus I don't need to design a new lid.

The LCD cable has a 30 pin IPEX (20634) connector and because it's not compatible with the NUC's eDP cable, I developing a breakout board. In the next post you'll see.

Pinout for NUC's eDP cable

There is a eDP cable on the market for the first generation NUC, for the DE3815TYBE exactly. But regarding to the tech spec guide the connector pin out on the motherboard is the same with the 5th generation model. On the mobo you can find a JAE FI-X30SSLA-HF connector so the cable plug should be a FI-X30H or a FI-X30HL.
I ordered one and yesterday the mailman just dropped by, so let's see the cable.
Part number: INTL-EDP-FTDS

So here is the JAE FI-X30HL connector pinout:

 1 NC
 2 GND black
 3 LANE1 P black
 4 LANE1 N white
 5 GND black
 6 LANE0 P red
 7 LANE0 N white
 8 GND black
 9 AUX P blue
10 AUX N white
11 GND black
12 LCD_VCC black
13 LCD_VCC brown
14 NC
15 GND black
16 GND black
17 HPD red
18 GND black
19 GND black
20 GND black
21 GND black
22 ENABLE orange
23 PWM_DIM yellow
24 NC
25 NC
26 BKLT_PWR green
27 BKLT_PWR blue
28 BKLT_PWR purple
29 BKLT_PWR grey
30 NC

And here is the other side of the cable which should be an IPEX 20634 CABLINE-CA connector, the pinout:

 1 NC
 2 GND
 3 LANE1 P black
 4 LANE1 N white
 5 GND
 6 LANE0 P red
 7 LANE0 N white
 8 GND
 9 AUX P blue
10 AUX N white
11 GND
12 LCD_VCC black
13 LCD_VCC brown
14 NC
15 GND
16 GND
17 HPD red
18 GND
19 GND
20 GND
21 GND
22 ENABLE orange
23 PWM_DIM yellow
24 NC
25 NC
26 BKLT_PWR green
27 BKLT_PWR blue
28 BKLT_PWR purple
29 BKLT_PWR grey
30 NC

If you wondering about what happened with the lot of black wires(GND)? well it's converter into a big one.
Maybe this information is useful for someone else too.

NUC alternative (?)

I just got a hint about Sapphire's 4x4 AMD solution. Check out the BP-FT3GS board.

It's really nice, it has a AMD G-series processor and smaller than the NUC! But after a little research the lack of displayport is a disadvantage and I'm not sure what is the maximum resultion for HDMI output. The price is really friendly it's only 170USD, but I already bought my NUC so.. And btw it's looks like kind of same as the GizmoSphere's Gizmo 2.