[Toybox] Phone docking stations for general purpose computing.

[Rob Landley]

On 5/18/20 9:21 AM, Jarno Mäkipää wrote:
> 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.

I've been able to do remote desktop viewing through the internet for decades
since I first used a Java implementation of the citrix desktop viewer running on
the powerpc javaos port in 1996. At, if I recall, 75 mhz.

Google just launched an entire game platform based on the idea a game console
running in the cloud can export its display through the internet in realtime as
basically a youtube video:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Stadia

(The market would appear to disagree with its assertion that there's any REASON
to do this, or that the network latency to go from texas to california and back
isn't going to affect twitch game reaction times, but that's a seperate issue
about whether machine A can export a display to machine B over a packet protocol
with today's technology.)

How is exporting video through USB-C harder than same kind of video stream being
generated from the phone's built in camera in realtime? Google hangouts is not
only looking at a full screen view of other people's faces all the time, it's
receiving and scaling like EIGHT of them to display at the bottom of the screen.
The phone does not get hot while it does this and the battery lasts reasonably long.

The technology exists. Emitting mutant HDMI video through a USB connector is a
choice, and it was a stupid one. Obviously that won't go through a network hub,
but neither would channeling a VGA signal through a USB2 connector. But why on
earth would you DO that? What's the POINT? Where's the NEED? Whatever's turning
video from the CAMERA into a compressed stream should be able to turn the
DISPLAY into a compressed stream. It is a set of pixel values. We have a "take
screenshot" thing built into the phone (hold down power until the menu comes up).

As to whether it's VNC or MP4 or something else entirely... *shrug*

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

It can, and if that's the solution we get fine, but it needs to be $5, not
require a router, and power itself from what it's plugged into. Otherwise how is
a child in https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/the-wilderness-library/
supposed to wind up in posession of one?

A call center cycling out 20 year old equipment is going to have to dispose of a
lot of usb keyboards, mice, and hubs. Televisions get replaced all the time and
the "CRT->LCD" ship has very thoroughly sailed:

  https://landley.net/notes-2019.html#08-10-2019

It's easy to tell a story about those being available to otherwise highly
underprivileged people. But I'm not seeing how boxes full of old chromecasts
wind up on the thirdhand market and get lugged to a flea market in a rural
village? Where's the story behind that being a regular thing? And if they
_don't_, they'll have to order the adapter from from alibaba in places where a
woman's average daily wage is below $3 according to
https://www.indiaspend.com/daily-wages-in-india-doubled-in-18-years-but-wage-inequalities-grow-20098/
and if it's a kid pestering her MOTHER for it as all she wants for christmas, it
had better be cheap, rugged, and work out of the box the first time.

That was very much _not_ my wife's experience with her chromecast. (She
eventually wound up replacing it with a roku stick.)

Rob