[Toybox] Phone docking stations for general purpose computing.

[Jarno Mäkipää]

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:41 PM David Seikel
<onefang_toybox at dave.isageek.net> wrote:
>
> 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?

I have pixel 3a and usb-c docking station for laptop. Docking station
has 1 hdmi and 2 display ports, and few usb ports, lan etc... With
quick 'plug and pray' test I could not get displays to work, but USB
keyboard works nicely. Googling problem points to few msg boards that
say Nexus 5 was last google phone supporting video output on usb-c but
cant find any reliable source for information.

Chromecast could be used to share screen. Having keyboard and mice
working is at least something.

-Jarno

> >
> > 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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> > Toybox at lists.landley.net
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>
> --
> A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
> coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.
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