Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

What's the status on USB VGA for the tablets? I know there has been some work (Graham Cobb's work was documented in this thread; there was a presentation [brief] at the Maemo Summit). Does it work well enough to stop improvement?

I'm real interested now that some pocket projectors have come to market. I'm thinking about the recent Optoma Pico projector. If the USB VGA process is good enough now, does anyone have experience with VGA adapters and projectors?

Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

I did a slideshow presentation from the tablet using a USB-VGA adapter and a a special Nokia N810 with some Nokia kernel hacks. The framerate was poor (animations looked terrible on the big screen) but it faithfully projected my slides.

We begged the Nokians to release their changes, and they said they'd try, but nothing ever came of it. So that's a big reason why no progress has been made; the only people who got it to work well have not shared with anyone else.

I think we're all waiting for the new Maemo device now; its supposed to have video out.

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

Also, as discussed previously, the Pico projector only supports composite video in. Therefore, for the tablets, you'd be looking at carrying the tablet, a USB-to-VGA device, the Pico projector, a scan converter, some sort of power pack for the scan converter, and all the cables to interconnect the lot. You'd hardly be traveling light.

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

Thought I'd bump this thread...

Just saw this featured on mertiline...

http://www.meritline.com/mediagate-u...--p-32988.aspx

Reportedly will do dvi/vga/hdmi at 1600x1200.

Only $70...

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

A somewhat different picture:
http://pc4usa.com/index.asp?PageActi...OD&ProdID=1697

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

I'm waiting for one of these pico projectors to offer a bluetooth link so you can use them over bluetooth instead of composite.

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

i do not think bluetooth has the bandwidth needed. even with edr its only close to usb1...

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

Video would be too much, but slides should work. See, for instance, the Impatica ShowMate, made by Color Graphic.

It's actually a little endian ARM (Atmel AT91RM9200) Linux box. Connecting to it via USB shows that it's a "Gadget Serial" device running "Linux 2.6.12-csb637 with at91_udc". On the Impatica website, the latest firmware for the device is available for download, and if you dig into the ZIP file, there's a Linux kernel, a filesystem image (containing BusyBox, BlueZ, etc.), and some other interesting odds and ends.

I have one. I hope to eventually find the time to get it working with the tablets.

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

looks to me like they do some kind of conversion on a pc, and then uses a special protocol to push the converted data over bluetooh to the box...

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

Well, given that you're only doing powerpoint slides, and static pictures, I see no reason why you couldn't use bluetooth to transmit the images to the device. Besides, the tablets have class 2 BT anyways, right? That's 3mbps, which should be plenty for tablet sized video. The only thing I'd worry about is if it crushed the processor trying to do both video and bluetooth. But it would be possible. Whether you'd have a reason to do it is another thing entirely, but the potential is there, so I don't see why you wouldn't want to at least try to at least connect via BT.

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

That Impactica looks neat! I can just see it running an X server or a upnp client. :) That could make for some fairly interesting hacks...

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

lol, we can't even get good AD2P working on the tablet, and we are jumping to video via bluetooth. Slides, yeah with some hacking would work, but not video. Not yet...

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

True, but one can dream. :D I'm still eagerly looking forward to the day when I can carry a NIT sized PC in my pocket as part of a wearable computer. ;)

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

sounds like viiv s5...

Re: Progress on External VGA? (Pocket Projecting)
 

What's wrong with a2dp? There are 2 fundamental issues, firstly that sounds are mixed on the DSP and we don't have access to the mixed output (so we can't have seamless a2dp usage), and secondly that Linux lacks high accuracy timers (so we lack good quality output).

Neither of these is particularly related to the fact it's a tablet (though they are both design issues, mixing choice and operating system choice).