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Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

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Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#111

Post by marwis »

zackmorris wrote: post #37
cracauer wrote: post #26

Tablets should have a HDMI/Displayport in so that you can directly use them as displays.

I'd even go one step further: we should have had a standard communications protocol like TCP for all devices. So a display would show up as just another device that we could use to read/write bytes. All devices would have a standard queryable HTTP/HATEOAS self-documenting interface. And HDMI/DisplayPort or USB A/B/C/.../Z would all use the same protocol as gigabit ethernet or Thunderbolt or anything else, so the band…

> There was never a technical reason why we couldn't have this. Mostly Microsoft and Apple blocked this sort of generalization at every turn.

On the contrary, Microsoft tried really hard with UPnP/PnP-X/DPWS/Rally/Miracast*/etc but nobody was interested.

*BTW any Windows 10+ device can act as a Miracast sink (screen) so you can link Windows laptops/tablets as extra screens without any additional software.

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#112

Post by squarefoot »

If manufacturers released enough details about their devices and drivers, then unlocked the bootloaders, we could do a lot more things than a 2nd monitor with old tablets. There are piles of them taking dust in drawers, or worse in landfills because of forced obsolescence.

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#114

Post by maccard »

nunez wrote: post #33

I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…

My preference is 3x 24 inch screens. In theory, I'd like one of them to be a tablet or a touch screen device that sits underneath the other two.

It basically boils down to one screen for "the app/website/whatever" one for code, and one for a reference. I _can_ hold contexts, but I also have tools to do that for me.

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#115

Post by maccard »

Dries007 wrote: post #59
nunez wrote: post #33

I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…

What resolution & DPI is I think far more important than how many displays. I have 4. 1x 1440@27", 1x 1440@24" and 2x1080@24". If I had known 1440@24" would die out, I would have bought 3 of those instead. For me the ideal would be a 16:10 24" screen with the same density as the 1440 16:9 models. It's the perfect size & resolution for desktop use in programming / engineering. I'd buy 3 of those, but they don't exist…

>to layer context

Such a good way of capturing it.

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#116

Post by maccard »

bemmu wrote: post #46
nunez wrote: post #33

I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…

I'm doing some light gamedev, and with two 28" screens I feel like I could use a little bit more screen real estate. The situation where this still feels lacking is when I'm trying to solve a problem and have a 3D game view, source code, object list and properties, debug output, debugger (watched variables, call stack) on one screen. Then on another screen I'll read documentation of whatever I'm trying to fix. Produc…

Also games. 3x24 inch screens felt like the best balance to me. I had 2x27 and 1x 24 for a while, but I dropped back to 1x27 and 1x24 and prefer it. That's what I roll these days

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#117

Post by maccard »

croisillon wrote: post #55
nunez wrote: post #33

I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…

almost everybody at my job has 2 screens, i'm sorry but i only have one brain

I've got a keyboard and mouse, but spend most of my day using just the keyboard. That doesn't mean a mouse isn't useful

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#118

Post by folmar »

angra_mainyu wrote: post #65

I've done this with RDP + Android tablet on Linux. Performance depends heavily on your tablet's hardware, enormously so.

RDP is client-heavy, some flavor of VNC should do fine even on the most underpowered hardware (provided you are not watching videos).

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#119

Post by radicality »

mcpherrinm wrote: post #108
cracauer wrote: post #26

Tablets should have a HDMI/Displayport in so that you can directly use them as displays.

You can plug a USB HDMI capture dongle into tablets and do this. Any webcam viewer would probably work to view it, though there's dedicated apps intended for this like https://orion.tube/ on iPad. I know there's options on Android but don't have a modern android tablet to test them.

Do you know how come that app doesn’t work on the IPhone 15 Pro?

I don’t have the iPad, but just recently got the 15 Pro, and it’s able to do a bunch of things via the usbc port (wired Ethernet, SD card reading, driving a Pro Display XDR etc), but I wasn’t able to do something like that Orion app is showing.

Was thinking of pretty much same use case as shown in the app, where I could plug in an external camera and use the phone as a high resolution / high-nit viewer display. Are these apis only for iPadOS because the iPhones are missing some required hardware for it?

Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor

#120

Post by wkipling »

zyxin wrote: post #113
fudged71 wrote: post #20

Any options for an ancient iPad?

From the Readme, their eventual plan for the project is to be able to serve the client through the web browser which would mean that almost all tablets would be supported.

Didn't Apple drop support for old iOS devices so they can't access the web anymore. Safari is useless even for local sites I believe.
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