How to convert your old laptop screen into an external monitor
slashdigit.com
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https://www.panelook.com/index.php
https://github.com/avtehnik/RTD2662
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=ru&tl=en&u=htt...
http://monitor.espec.ws/files/rtd2662_spec_brief_0702_171.pd...
https://github.com/ghent360/RTD-2660-Programmer/
https://sites.google.com/site/lcd4hobby/how-to-start
http://www.mattmillman.com/info/lcd/rovatools
That’s retail.
I have changed my mind on this: if you were selling a million televisions a month, you could absolutely make it work from a money standpoint. They don’t need to send back tons of data and they don’t need to do it particularly fast.
This should be pretty easy to implement on the telco side and it would let them monetize the dead time in the network, same as TOU pricing for electricity.
OTOH, perhaps it's simply a question of an insufficiently large addressable market for non-realtime data like this. Maybe there's room for an M2M-focused MVNO to negotiate a block of off-hours data for dirt cheap and offer this kind of service, maybe paired with some kind managed platform to handle the storage and transmission side.
You’d think ha. Economists have a term for this “deadweight loss”.
MVNO are probably the best place for this kind of dynamism but they are always limited by the tools that the tier 1 carriers give them.
There is stuff like you describe on the way but progress is glacial. You’ll get bits and pieces dripped out bit by bit as the big guys satisfy themselves they’re not missing out on anything.
Just a note that this was one of the puzzles Steve Jobs managed to crack. We had smart phones before the iPhones but progress was stymied by the industry - thankfully jobs recognised the potential and had the wherewithal to put the Telcos over his knee and make them his bitch.
Steve is gone now, and there aren’t too many players like that around now and you can see how gradually the smartphone market has started to tend back towards the more orthodox again.
Reviewed at http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgre... (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363 )
https://sites.google.com/site/lcd4hobby/6-lcd-as-pc-vga-hdmi...
https://imall.com/product/LCD-TV-Controller-Driver-Board-MSD...
It's hard to keep track of all the different variants as this seems to be a bunch of Chinese companies all copying each other. You can find these boards under names such as MSD3663/3463 DS3663LUA, TSUMV53/V56/V59, etc.
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guess an 3rd-party script- and ad-blocker is the way to go
I recently came into a pile of V-by-one panels, and discovered boards for them are significantly harder to come by than their eDP or LVDS brethren. But I've found a few on aliexpress and we're up and running:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32860791745.html
The nice thing about VBO is the connector is more-or-less standardized, and it's a very durable JAE series, so plugging and unplugging isn't such an issue. (Prototyping with LVDS or MIPI DSI tends to run into fatigue issues unless you're scrupulously gentle.)
Beyond the panel interface, there's also the matter of the backlight. Sometimes the backlight driver is separate, sometimes it's built into the scaler board. The connectors for these are almost always evil and you have to hope your supplier can include the cables, because you'll never find them yourself.
I would loooooove to find a source for the SDK to build the software that runs in the scaler chip. When I buy the scaler boards, they come with random firmware that the supplier isn't particularly interested in updating. Other builds of the same board support DDC/CI but don't have the backlight driver on 'em, and cost more. There's so much stuff about the firmware I'd like to change...
Though it only operates at 1080p, I'm not sure whether it can accept more and then downscales the output, or what.
The existence of this possibility, by the way, is why there's some push in the movie industry to encrypt the scaler-to-panel connection. (eyeroll...)
Taking the thing apart is gonna be required at some point anyway, you might as well take that plunge. Lay a soft blanket on a sufficiently large work surface, grab some tools, and have at!
* Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan is what busted the header. I'm not sure because the previous fan was dead and the new fan I put in didn't spin, but that's part of why I don't feel comfortable just winging it.
The biggest caveat in re-using old compute hardware IMO is power consumption, power-efficiency has been one consistent improvement in every new generation of computer chips. So, a new Raspberry Pi is almost always as capable as your old hardware for HTPC but more power efficient.
Except maybe say extremely high quality video, say 8K 10 bit video.
>Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan is what busted the header.
You can try passive heatsink or passing the fan thermal management to separate unit altogether like Corsair Commandar(I haven't tried it).
You can also use your hardware for only GPGPU applications & HW accel on GPU to reduce load on CPU e.g. Separate stream encoding machine.
yes but your typical laptop rarely exceeds 30W, so if your electricity is priced at $0.12 per kWh, and you run that laptop 24x7 for a year:
22.32 kWh per month
same as
$2.67 of electricity
Transactions don’t consume this electricity, competing for the next block does.
Transactions are the only thing that contributes to energy usage.
Which is a reward for processing transactions.
> Without transactions, it would still happen that way. And does, in the form of empty blocks.
If we eliminated the ability to transact Bitcoin, the ledger would be closed - finalized. A data blob plus a published SHA. Like any other archive.
Mining allows you to amend said ledger, by processing a batch of updates. It is the process by which you amend the ledger, grouped into blocks of 0 or more transactions.
Transactibility is what uses 100% of the energy of the bitcoin network and it's fine to quantize that energy usage on a per-block, and per-transaction basis.
Mining furnishes transactibility. Transactibility is quantized into blocks, blocks into transactions. I'm sorry, it's clear, transactions and the ability to execute them are what uses 100% of the power of Bitcoin. If not that, then what? Don't just say "mining" - explain what mining provides if not transactibility.
No, it is a reward for finding the next block. Miners can optionally choose to include transactions if they wish.
0 or more transactions form a block, which is mined to facilitate mutations. Mutations in the form of transactions. Nothing more. The block reward is compensation for providing the service of processing blocks of 0 or more transactions. A mining scheme that consistently has 0 transactions achieved nothing. End of story. If you disagree explain to me what else mining achieves.
Edit: in case you’re still struggling: mining yields the block subsidy reward. That is its primary function.
The method of facilitating transactions consumes all the power, so you can divide the average number of transactions per block to obtain the power expended per average transaction.
Trust me I’m not struggling here, except with pushing back on the koolaid consumption. Folks who pursue extensive mental gymnastics to justify their having obtained wealth through environmental destruction: it’s like if everyone holding Bitcoin woke up one day to realize they’d killed a gorilla in the process. They’d try really hard to convince themselves they didn’t or that it wasn’t their fault. Even to pretend it didn’t happen because the gorillas were simply transmuted to a better life in the sky.
> The biggest caveat in re-using old compute hardware IMO is power consumption
This is a relatively recent laptop (it has a GTX 1060 inside!), and I can't get hardware that capable for cheap enough for it to be worth it. My only reason for making it an HTPC is that I don't want to see it gather dust on a shelf for no reason.
> You can try passive heatsink
I've considered that + other cheap ways, but I'm concerned about mounting. The CPU runs hot, even when well cooled, so I'd need some way to get good contact with the die without harming it. There's a few screw slots around it, but those are for the heat pipes it comes with. That's the biggest challenge in this project from my perspective.
> You can also use your hardware for only GPGPU applications & HW accel on GPU to reduce load on CPU e.g. Separate stream encoding machine
Unfortunately, I don't have any use cases where that could come in handy. Working a full-time job killed my dreams of producing content :'). I just want this to sit at my 4K TV and play content without snooping on me, like all the big name boxes do.
Maybe I'll whip up a Linux live usb drive and try booting it this weekend!
If you're worried about it from an environmental perspective, it often takes more energy / resource mining / pollution to manufacture a new piece of hardware than the total amount saved from not running older hardware over a longer lifetime. Running a computer / smartphone / tablet until it doesn't work well enough for its purpose is generally better for the environment than upgrading because shiny, because it slightly reduces the demand for new hardware.
I got a huge crack (https://ibb.co/1mPxC6C) in my smartphone's screen right around New Year's. One of my goals was to use my phone less (less social media). The crack is a big, ~.25in black diagonal line across the screen, but the touch still works. Because it's a diagonal crack, I can still read whole text messages/emails/etc, I just have to scroll the right way.
It's now March and I still haven't fixed my screen, mostly out of laziness since I'm home all the time, but also because it's done wonders to my smartphone use. I practically don't idly scroll anymore, just because it's really annoying to do so, and I don't miss it at all. Everyone thinks I'm nuts, but I haven't read twitter in like 3 months so who's the crazy one?
I'd say, don't bother upgrading! Enjoy that the addictive quality of your smartphone is diminished.
The only thing I read obsessively on my phone these days is hacker news. :-) I stopped using most social media 6 or 7 years ago.
That depends a lot on where you live. In Germany, prices scratch 0.3€/kWh. A new Pi sets you back 60€ [0]. Assuming you save 20W and it's on 24/7, you'll break even in just above a year[1].
[0] I know it's marketed as cheaper, but you never get it for 35€ and then you still need cables and an SD card.
[1] you save 52.50€ per year
My general point is that there's a lot of externalized costs to consider depending on what you're trying to optimize for. For example, I live in a somewhat chilly area most of the year, and part of my home is electrically heated rather than by natural gas. I don't particularly care how efficient any electronics are in that part of the house (when I'm using them) because that electricity is converted into useful heat just as well as a space heater would do it.
> it never hurts to do the math for your particular situation
I think we can agree on that :)
One measurement which really surprised me was that my 2019 XPS 13 idles with about 1.5W, screen on according to powertop. That's less power than a Raspberry Pi takes to idle!
In my case, the weight of the fan connected to a 12v motorcycle battery was enough to make it not throttle at indefinite 100% load, I didn’t have to zip tie anything. Mind that I did not remove the existing fans, just used thermal interface material on top of the existing heat sink, add some salvaged aluminium passive cooling sinks on top, and then on top of that, have the fan screwed into an Amazon shipping box so that the fan blades didn’t hit the sinks.
- Build a DIY screen out of recycled parts for cheap: https://youtu.be/CfirQC99xPc
- Building a USB-C touchscreen monitor: https://youtu.be/DrqdHVeBkp4
- Transform a Damaged Laptop into an all-in-one desktop PC: https://youtu.be/8jeLCQ62vFk
The Lenovo with the bent bottom case appeared in many episodes as illustration, until it finally got repurposed!
But +1 for the recommendation, so easy to set up and it works so well it feels like magic when using for first time.
I'm not a developer and I first discovered Syngerg about 10 years ago when I was working physical infrastructure and physical security in a data centre, and used it across my work provided Windows desktop and my personal (BYOD) Macbook Air.
If I recall correctly I was able to use it for free initially, but as soon as I discovered I could pay for it I did.
BTW the parts of Synergy that were Open Source are still Open Source, so you're free to download those and build them yourself if you so choose.
Gives your main PC extra screens from spare laptops. Plus you can farm out secondary tasks (like run Chrome) on the ancillary screen devices.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/wall-of-fame/mouse-wi...
step 1: go to thrift store
step 2: buy normal $5 15-17 LCD monitor
You can set up something like mouse without borders or something that uses it as a over the network display or buy these controllers and make a custom case/mount/stand but in the end you're probably better off accepting you're better off buying a new monitor even though this one works great you "just" need to detach it from the laptop.
For as many that say "but I did and it works great" you don't really see many people going out of their way to get a laptop screen instead of a monitor prior to the cost already being sunk. That being said sometimes it's useful when you explicitly set out to build a budget custom video wall (11520x6480 52" can be had for cheaper than one might imagine) but usually you're buying specific panels at that point not finding yourself in possession of 9 of the same model laptop display by accident.
You can defineteley do it, but I still haven't found a good use case for my 15" LCD screen.
For that price (~30$) you can get a much bigger used monitor.
I'm typing this on a Compaq laptop I rescued from a skip (running Debian), a keyboard I paid 50 NOK for at a jumble sale, connected to a 20 inch Dell LCD VGA monitor bought at Fretex, the Norwegian Salvation army chain of second hand shops. I think I paid about 150 NOK for the monitor about five years ago, that was about 20 USD then.
Ideally, a customer would enter their iMac model and serial number to see if a kit was available so they wouldn’t have to crack open their computer to find the display panel model.
This may be complicated because different models have different sets of ports and it’s possible that batches of the same model were made with different LCD panels and display controllers.
The varying ports would not be an issue if customers were willing to modify their cases with a rotary grinder.
The resulting monitors would have DisplayPort (regular & USB-C), HDMI, and DVI-I inputs that could be switched between. A builtin USB hub would also be great. It would be better if the embedded iSight webcam was connected to the USB hub internally and the audio jacks repurposed to utilize the builtin microphone and amplified speakers.
In an alternate universe Apple could have included a monitor input port and let users switch between displaying the internal and external computers. They sort of did this with Thunderbolt on a few models but that was only useful with other Macs.
I really wish the iMac had never been an all-in-one product and instead was a minitower or pizza box chassis with regular PCI Express slots and a separate monitor but here we are. In that scenario, folks with less compute and expansion needs would get a Mac Mini. Is connecting 3 extra cables (monitor, monitor power, and USB) such a heavy lift?
As far as I can tell, they make them flimsy and not replaceable on cheaper laptops on purpose. I shudder to think of the environmental impact.
I have an old MacBook 12” that it would be nice to use as an extra display. I looked into this a few years ago and all the options had really poor video quality as they used Airplay (I would probably mainly use it for a terminal window so I’d want sharp text, I could handle a little lag)
This way, it becomes a sort of portable desktop/laptop hybrid.
Maybe someone can mill an exoframe box and sell it on Etsy, that allows you to plug in a monitor, keyboard, and the magic Apple trackpad for such an idea?
The U2415 has a horrible power supply which gets very noisy by design and it has a 6 bit panel with noticeable temporal dithering.
I'd pick one of the 2560x14440 U27xx models (after checking they're not crap like the U2715). But beware that some of the older models (like the U2713) don't take the full resolution over HDMI and need Displayport or dual-link DVI.
EDIT: Interesting. It seems you actually work for/with a company affiliated with Shells? If so, can you do a compare/contrast with Guacamole, AWS Workspaces, etc.?
This requirement means that it mustn't be a very old laptop. I have a nice IBM R52 Thinkpad, Pentium M 1.8 GHz, 512 MB memory that runs Antix Linux but struggles to run a modern web browser.
It seems to me that if you can run a modern web browser then you have enough hardware to run a modern OS locally.