Coming soon · designed and built in the UK
The dock is about to get a brain.
A docking station is usually just a box of ports. OpenDock puts a small board inside that you can actually configure: set how you like your screens, sound and VPN, set the network for the desk, and choose what runs the moment you dock or undock. The first one is being built right now.
Click a part in the model to see what it does.
Why it's different
Set it up once. Your desk does the rest.
Think about what you do every time you sit somewhere new — a hot desk, a meeting room, the office after a few days working from home. You fix the screen layout, move the sound to the monitor, reconnect the VPN, hunt down the printer. With OpenDock you set all of that once, on the dock itself, and it does the lot for you from then on — the instant you plug in.
And it all lives on the dock itself — so it works whatever laptop you bring. You plug in, and your desk is ready.
What's built in
What every OpenDock does.
The same features sit on the board inside every OpenDock. Here is what each one does at your desk.
Remembers how you set up the desk
It saves your screens, sound, keyboard and VPN, and sets them back the next time you dock — at this desk or any other OpenDock. It refreshes that saved copy each time you unplug, so it stays current.
A shared desk, one setup each
When two people share a desk, each laptop keeps its own saved setup, side by side. Plug in and the right one comes back — yours for you, theirs for them.
Set the desk's network once
Configure the desk's network on the dock, and it holds onto those settings — so any laptop that docks is online within seconds, with nothing to set up on the laptop.
Set what happens when you dock and undock
Configure what should happen as you arrive and as you leave — mute notifications, open apps, lock the screen — and it happens every time, with no window to open.
Open, and all on the dock
How it works is public for anyone to read and build on, and everything it keeps lives on the dock itself, right there on your desk.
Keeps an eye on its own health
The dock watches its own temperature and workings and reports how it's doing, so you can trust it to run quietly in the background and speak up if it ever needs a hand.
Tracks your time at the desk
It records every time a laptop docks and undocks, so you can see how long you've used a desk — today, the last week, or further back. The record is kept on the dock itself.
Its own page
Open it in any browser. No app to install.
Plug the dock in and it puts up a web page of its own at http://opendock.local — open it from any computer, in any browser, with nothing to install. This is where you configure the dock and set it up your way: the desk's name, its network, the rules for the desk, and the records it keeps. An ordinary dock gives you none of this.
The page runs the dock itself. The laptop side — bringing up your screens, switching audio, connecting the VPN and running the rules you set — is handled by DockPilot, a free companion app for Linux. How DockPilot works →
Be first
This one is going to be big.
The first board is in production and the dock is close behind. If you run a fleet of laptops and you are done with docks that tell you nothing, get in early: send a line about your setup and we will bring you into the first UK pilots, before anyone else.
[email protected]