[Toybox] Phone docking stations for general purpose computing.

[David Seikel]

On 2020-05-17 20:42:05, Rob Landley wrote:
> Hey Elliott, USB-C to HDMI adapters are going for $5 now. If I grabbed something
> like https://www.ebay.com/i/312982429778 or https://www.ebay.com/i/302957153131
> or any of the dozen others, and plugged that and my pixel 3a into the same usb-c
> hub, could I get the display on my TV and if so what would I need to do?
> 
> Next question: ARE there any usb-c hubs, and if so what keyword should I be
> looking for to find them? All the hubs seem to be "USB-C to 4 USB-A" splitters.
> so far. (It's like trying to find a gigabit ethernet switch in 2005: it's all
> one uplink port and the rest is 100baseT.)

The big problem vith that is that not all USB-C is created equal. 
Specifically, not all of them support video out.

For example - My Motolora Z has a USB-C, and is compatible with the
Motorola Moto Mod system (add on hardware system that clips hardware
extensions onto the back magnetically).  I can plug HDMI and USB keyboard
/ mouse into that, but not using the USB-C that is on the phone itself. 
I have to use the USB-C that is on the Moto Mod developers kit, which is
a Moto Mod with three USB ports, two USB-C and one micro B.  The HDMI
comes out of one of those extra USB-C, but only using a hacked up Moto Mod
firmware.  No video is available on the phones own USB-C, so I use that
for the keyboard / mouse.  I plug the lot into my KVM.

A powered hub that can supply power to the phone while you spend all day
developing on it would also be useful.

Another option for getting video out of a phone is Chromecast via WiFi. 
That's what I use to give Google Daydream VR demos, so I can watch what is
on the screen of the phone strapped to someone elses head.

> Anyway, it occurs to me that with the shift from 32 to 64 bit hardware (which is
> why so many devices got stuck on Android-M: they were 32 bit) plus the shift to
> USB-C, means I may need to draw a line in the sand.
> 
> What I probably should be targeting is "5 years from now there's gonna be a lot
> of old 64 bit phone hardware with USB-C in the backs of drawers", and people
> will want to use that as hobbyist development systems the way Linux took over
> all the old 386 PCs in the 1990's but ignored the 286 systems.
> 
> Everything _older_ than 64 bits with USB-C is basically 16-bit ISA PCs at this
> point, which would be _nice_ to support but getting that to rebuild itself under
> itself is less useful, because that pool of hardware is shrinking from here on
> out and the other is doing all the growing.
> 
> What's  useful is teaching new systems to have a "general purpose computing
> mode" (in a container or whatever) that can plug the phone into keyboard, mouse,
> and big display, and having THAT instead of having a PC means you are not a
> second class citizen but a full-fledged developer. The "docking station" to give
> a phone a real screen, keyboard, and mouse is a usb-c hub, usb mouse and
> keyboard, and a $5 hdmi adapter, which is all cheap generic and (eventually)
> ubiquitous.

There might be ubiquitous USB-C gadgets, but it'll be the return of Plug
and Pray to see if you are lucky enough to have the correct set of
gadgets that will talk to each other in the way you want.

On the plus side, once the hardware is sorted, things just work.  I
didn't have to teach my phone about external mice or keyboards.

> At some point I'd like to be able to draw a line in the sand and say "from this
> system and on newer, you don't need a PC anymore, not even to do Android OS
> development". Then the PC can go the way of the mainframe and minicomputer
> before it, no longer the machine anyone sits down at to do their work, it's just
> big iron at the other end of some network cable that only its priesthood ever
> needs to touch.
> 
> But what would be really nice is the ability to prototype this now. Can I put
> together such a docking station that works with a modern phone? Getting a
> terminal on the screen with a posix container that can build AOSP is just
> software at that point. (And stripping down AOSP so it doesn't take an 16x cloud
> server hours to build it is also just a question of putting in the work. For one
> thing, you don't "make debian", you make and install packages...)
> 
> Rob
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-- 
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coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.