N810 may be cheap, but you need real hardware to the other end doing the actual work(playing video etc)

A cheap add-on device, you mean? If so, any release of code from the noBounds research project isn't going to be very helpful. There's also no after-sales accessories market for the tablets, so it'd have to be homebrew building or Nokai developing and selling it.

But as is pointed out by mikkov, this is using a PC. Just plug the Nokia in as a USB Mass Storage Device and play it on the PC. noBounds doesn't seem to redirect the tablet's video output any better than VNC would, and other acceleration solely comes from using specialised software. So for video, you can already play it back using the external device.

In fact, I can sell that external device to you *right now* for only £150 ($299 or less!): it's an Asus Eee PC 701.

Yes, I get the distinct impression this is like VNC or X-forwarding on steroids; it looks like you need a device with a CPU and GPU at the display side that is capable of running an xserver with things like OpenGL. So the noBounds hardware will probably be at least $250, like the toy that sjgadsby stumbled across. Am I allowed to say what that device is?

Yes, something like (based on?) Chromium, but also some compressed video support.

And indeed I'm quite interested in that little box; what is it?

Hmm, why all the talk? VNC has to do bi-directional mouse/keyboard input for one thing and is designed for low encoding overhead (of the tiles). IMO this will result in low framerate. The scheme demonstrated on that N8x0 appears (or rather we were told this is how the transfer is done) to use rather high overhead mpeg4 encoding (which is ok if you have hw assist) then the decode is also very cheap assuming you have mpeg4 hw decoding. I.e. you can do high framerates assuming all the bits are in place.

That picture of a device on Flickr looks to have a usb input and a VGA output - USB-VGA adaptor? Like the thing the N8x0 has kernel drivers for?

In fact it was already discussed that they were talking about using the mpeg2/4 hw decoders that all modern HD TVs have...

VNC is very slow for that task anyway.

So they use a high-compression lossy video codec? And what HW assist?!

I don't know if it is just a video stream; the OpenGL demos showed different displays (different numbers of fish and buildings), and they explained that by saying that the N810 doesn't have HW GL, but the noBounds project does. The Quiver demo also showed a different display on the big screen (more thumbnails than on the tablet). That suggests that they are not sending video at all, but pre-rendered data that is simultaneously rendered on the tablet and the display side. This is more like X-Forwarding, except they are displaying the data on two displays.

Okay, that little box is an Impatica ShowMate, actually made by Colorgraphic. The device is small, about the size of a pack of playing cards, and has two USB ports, one HD-15 VGA port, and Bluetooth. It lets BlackBerry, Palm, Sony Ericsson, and Windows Mobile smart phone owners wirelessly project specially prepared PowerPoint presentations from their phones. Recent versions of the ShowMate firmware and software will also allow for the mirroring of a smart phone's screen.

I've wondered for some time how difficult it would be to write software for Internet Tablets to let them talk to ShowMates and posted several such musings here in the fora. None of the clever hackers and coders here jumped on the project though, so I bought one myself.

Before anyone thinks the ShowMate will give us PC-less noBounds, the device only takes video input via Bluetooth or USB 1. The bandwidth for HD isn't there, and even if someone found a patent-free compression scheme that would fit HD into the available bandwidth without overwhelming a tablet and/or the ShowMate, the ShowMate can only output at 800x600. Also, audio would need to be handled separately as the ShowMate does video only.

That said, there's plenty of folks here who have expressed a desire to leave the laptop behind and project (even prepared ahead of time) PowerPoint presentations from their tablets. Additionally, low frame rate screen mirroring might be sufficient for some uses. I'm interested in exploring possibilities along these lines.

The ShowMate itself runs Linux 2.6 on a little endian ARM processor. Specifically, the processor is an Atmel AT91RM9200, and graphics are handled by an Epson S1D13506F00A chip.

Connect my (old stock, un-updated) ShowMate to a Linux computer via the ShowMate's mini-USB port*, and the Linux box will recognize the ShowMate as a Linux 2.6.12-csb637 gadget serial device. Fire up Miniterm on the cdc-acm port Linux created, and the ShowMate will prompt you for a password. Enter "probridge", and you'll be presented with a menu allowing you to check and upgrade the firmware in the ShowMate.

* Officially, this mini-USB port is the power port for the ShowMate.

The USB-A male to USB-A male I purchased to investigate the ShowMate's data USB port has just finally arrived, so I haven't had an opportunity to check that out yet. I expect it to be a host port rather than gadget serial.

Probing the ShowMate via BTScanner doesn't reveal anything, but then, Impatica says they use their own application layer protocol. In most versions of the firmware, it's also encrypted.

The latest firmware for the ShowMate is available as a free download from Impatica. Poke around inside the ZIP file, and you'll find a Linux kernel image, a filesystem image, and some other odds and ends. If you mount the filesystem image via loopback, you'll be able to find BusyBox, BlueZ, assorted GNU utilities, some GNU & gcc headers, etc.

What you won't find in the ZIP file is a copy of the GPL, and I've been holding off on posting this for that reason. Rather than include a copy of the GPL with software & firmware releases, Impatica includes an "acknowledgements.txt" file that mentions some of the code used in their product is GPLed. Don't look for the "acknowledgments.txt" file in the firmware download on the Impatica web site though. I'm told they forgot to include it this time.

According to the Impatica employee with whom I've corresponded, they will provide complete corresponding source upon request via postal mail (and payment for media cost). I have not yet mailed my request, but I will be doing so.

Though Impatica does freely provide GPLed binaries on their web site, they do not provide any source code there. As they see it, they do not use FTP, but HTTP, so they don't need to.

Please, don't go all Slashdot-stupid on Impatica. I've held off posting information on the ShowMate before now because I don't want them attacked. I'm hoping with some polite encouragement, they'll fully comply with the GPL. Email threats and insults will not help matters.

Thanks for all that: very interesting stuff.

As for the GPL compliance, their reading of it (apart from not providing the necessary declarations along with the binaries) is perfectly within the letter of the licence, AIUI (I wasn't even aware of the AnonFTP "clarification" until now). It's fairly similar to Nokia's handling of the GPL (certainly in earlier OS releases) and, as long as they do send you the sources, perfectly fine.

Once you've got the sources, they can't stop you republishing them, of course.

Hear hear!

sjgadsby; thanks for that info. And that's something that I'd certainely be interested in and have a near immediate need for. Very cool.