Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 15:00 UTC (Mon) by djs_tx (guest, #29646)
Parent article: Maru: a pocket desktop

Requiring an unlocked bootloader with a hardware video output is a pretty limiting set of requirements. Cool though. Wish them the best.

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 16:58 UTC (Mon) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

The "hardware video output" is plugged into the USB-OTG port. (Almost) every smartphone has one of those.

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 19, 2016 12:45 UTC (Tue) by djs_tx (guest, #29646) [Link] (1 responses)

Is it truly a USB to video output or is it taking advantage of the Slimport capability of that phone? Couple years back many phones had "one connector / two functions" where the USB port could be turned into a video hardware output. Google MHL or Slimport for details

May seem like a minor difference but it is huge in terms of power draw and processing load on the phone. Almost all phones support USB OTG these days but none that I know of support charging while in host mode (without custom ROM / Kernel). So if it depended on host mode, the battery draw would be totally impractical.

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 19, 2016 22:05 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

MHL is basically HDMI using only the 5 wires in a USB 2.0 connector. The chip does a connection test to see if a MHL signal is there before enabling the USB side if it's not found. At least according to Wiki.

MHL is an open format, Slimport is proprietary. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link

Maru: a pocket desktop (virtual screen casting?)

Posted Apr 18, 2016 17:11 UTC (Mon) by faramir (subscriber, #2327) [Link]

I wonder if the hardware video output part could be solved with some kind of virtual screen casting system. Maybe a variant of Xvnc which uses Miracast, Chromecast or something similar to
throw the video display onto a large screen wirelessly.