8 ms·

Connecting an iPad retina LCD to a PC

276 points by noonespecial 14y ago

ttrreeww 14y ago
Do it with the Nexus 10 panel! 2560×1600!
- CJefferson 14y ago
  I would just like a nice way of using my nexus 10 as an external monitor -- I have tried a few things in Linux but nothing which really worked well.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    have you tried this? http://dmx.sourceforge.net/ http://dmx.sourceforge.net/ I've used it to combine macs and pc's as one big display and it worked pretty good.
    - idupree 14y ago
      I tried Xdmx a few months ago. It failed pretty badly for me, so I blogged about it ( http://idupree.dreamwidth.org/2151.html http://idupree.dreamwidth.org/2151.html ; choice quote: "Xdmx is broken in various different ways for various different people on the Web. Xdmx isn't very well maintained. It doesn't support XInput2 [1], it relies on Xinerama which is somewhat maintained but whose architecture needs improvement [2], it may be incompatible with Composite [3], it just plain segfaults for a lot of people [4], and is generally unloved [5]." — citations in blog post.)
      - jdc 14y ago
        There's also Synergy (http://synergy-foss.org http://synergy-foss.org).
- navitronic 14y ago
  edit: My mistake, forgot that it wasn't as wide.
  - wtallis 14y ago
    The iPad has a 4:3 2048x1536 display.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
shawndumas 14y ago
Add a Leap Motion device to the mix...
ElliotH 14y ago
Does anyone know if there is some company I could send off a schematic of the adapter he uses and have one sent to me? (This would be UK, but I have no idea what term I'm searching for to get a single circuit board made)
- noonespecial 14y ago
  You can have just the PCB part (without components) made at any of the places on this page: http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html You'll have to buy the connectors and solder them on yourself. It sounds like an adapter kit might have a little market when shipped with a displayport plug, a small power supply, and a fully assembled PCB. Small kickstarter?
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    You'll have to buy the connectors and solder them on yourself. Just FYI, those SMT flexible-printed-circuit connectors are a bitch to get soldered onto a PCB correctly. You might survive with a lot of flux and a very thin tip (and a microscope since the plastic will melt at a pretty low temp. No mistakes allowed). You might do a little better with a hot air gun. But this is not level-1 soldering.
- derda 14y ago
  PCB-Pool ( http://www.pcb-pool.com http://www.pcb-pool.com ) is a big player and should be shipping to the UK. But they are on the expensive side (production in germany). Batch-PCB ( http://www.batchpcb.com/ http://www.batchpcb.com/ ) takes longer (they have the boards made in china, at a reputable manufacurer), but cheaper. Itead Studio ( http://imall.iteadstudio.com/ http://imall.iteadstudio.com/ ) China, Very cheap (they buy empty spaces in fabs, you get 5 (or 10) PCBs buts its possible that one or two arent working. Bilex-Lp ( http://www.bilex-lp.com http://www.bilex-lp.com ), Bulgaria I think. Multi-CB ( http://www.multi-circuit-boards.eu/ http://www.multi-circuit-boards.eu/ ) I think they are a british company. I have no personal experience with any of those companies, though. Small batch PCB manufacturing is always expensive. Get in touch with a local hackerspace and etch it yourself ;-)
hmottestad 14y ago
I want one. Seriously though, I really want one. At 70 USD it's incredible. Dreaming of all the places I want a screen in my future house
- noonespecial 14y ago
  The really sad part? The entire build cost less than the replacement LCD element to revive my old thinkpad.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
That's pretty awesome, and a pretty grim testament to the lameness of Laptop makers if they aren't willing to put that panel in a laptop! (I mean seriously, you can't pull the display port connection out of an ivy bridge chipset? Something I have always felt there would be a good market for would be a compact an inexpensive LVDS (TFT-LCD connector) to some sort of driver (small FPGA or maybe SOC). You could then salvage displays from "dead" laptops (where the display works) and build up some pretty awesome sorts of deca-panel UIs :-) I'm thinking 'home star trek bridge' to a whole new level.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Unfortunately the problem with my collection of dead laptops is that the majority of them have dead screens.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    For me these become servers :-) Built in UPS for the win!
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      I wonder how my co-lo would react to me attempting to rack a pile of elderly laptops with display deficiencies :) I'm going to have to try this now...
      - noonespecial 14y ago
        I put a macbook in a $39 supermicro 1u case and took it to a colo so I wouldn't have to buy an xserve to run one cheesy little osx app. It worked great.
- signalsignal 14y ago
  The more features which are added to a laptop, the more it tends to cost.
- ajross 14y ago
silasb 14y ago
Any clues if the iPad Mini Display using the MiniDP interface?
- nobodyshere 14y ago
  Minis can be easily disassembled so if I were you I'd try those ifixit reviews where they do it and compare the connectors. Chances are still unknown though.
moreati 14y ago
If I'm reading http://www.ifixit.com/iPad-Parts/iPad-Retina-Display/IF116-022 http://www.ifixit.com/iPad-Parts/iPad-Retina-Display/IF116-0... correctly then all Retina iPads use the same screen i.e. 3rd gen (dock connector) and 4th gen (lightning connector) should both be compatible with this. Assuming you're brave/handy enough to cut the necessary holes to expose the connector
adamors 14y ago
Give me a Thinkpad with a screen (4:3 screen mind you) like this.
ibrahima 14y ago
Woah, $55 for that panel? Seems like it costs less than $100 including the PCB stuff, I'm really tempted to do this but I don't have the time :(. Heck, I'd buy a reasonably finished version of this for $150, maybe $200, without thinking too much. That's pretty awesome.
sinak 14y ago
I thought seriously about building and selling something similar to this about 4 years ago - really cool to see someone hack it together. Awesome work Andrzej! Compact, portable screens seem like a no-brainer to me. My MBA display is less than half an inch thick. Why does my desktop screen need to be significantly thicker? Why not use the same panels from laptops to build a display that can be used both on the desktop and for portable use? I love to use one large/two smaller screens when coding - and I want a display that I can pack into my bag along with my main display and use at a coffee shop. The panels themselves are generally cheap (it's something of a commodity market, but depending on the display size/specs they run $35 to $90) When I originally started researching this, there were two problems, both of which have been (pretty much) solved: 1 - Connectivity. Laptop panels generally use LVDS, which from my understanding are bit-reversed versions of DVI, possibly with some extra baggage. So you needed to have some intermediary processing, which was then (and is still) possible using a DisplayLink chip. The DisplayLink chip basically uses CPU power to create a virtual DVI/LVDS port over USB. The advantage of DisplayLink is that it negates the necessity for even using the Thunderbolt/DVI/Displayport output of your laptop, and allows you to simply plug in via USB and go. But the chips cost ~$15 each, require non-trivial integration, and use up CPU. As Andrzej mentions, displays are moving towards eDisplayPort, which means you can pretty much plug them in directly. 2 - Power draw. For the display to work well as a portable device, it should be possible to power it via USB alone. USB 2.0 standard is 5V and 0.5A, so 2.5W, which isn't sufficient. But USB 3.0 is 0.9A, bring the total up to 4.5W. As Andrzej mentions, the iPad display can be powered off the Displayport power (3.3W, 0.5A, ~1.9W), and with a step-up convertor you should just about be able to power the backlight up to max brightness from the USB port. Both those problems are now fixed. You can now build an external display, either using an iPad panel, or that from a 13" MBA or (possibly that of a MBP Retina, not sure about the power requirements there). Then you have an extremely slim, awesome external display that's completely portable and powered by USB. Some companies have been building crappy versions of this using DisplayLink chips, but I really want to see something with a clean, minimal design and way higher resolution. I'd try at it myself, but I'm busy trying to build software to enable better online political activism. If anyone out there is interested, I'd love to help, either with funding or advice. A few examples of products that do this (not very well) using DisplayLink chips: - http://www.mimomonitors.com http://www.mimomonitors.com - http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkVision-LT1421-Widescreen-Monitor/dp/B005L2NA54/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366665383&sr=8-1&keywords=portable+display http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkVision-LT1421-Widescreen-M... - http://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1649FWU-USB-Powered-Portable-Monitor/dp/B005SEZR0G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1366665383&sr=8-2&keywords=portable+display http://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1649FWU-USB-Powered-Portable-Moni... - http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-14-inch-Ultra-portable-Mobile-Monitor/dp/B005F0IKHA/ref=pd_cp_pc_1 http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-14-inch-Ultra-portable-Mobile-...
teeboy 14y ago
Or you could avoid all the trouble and bad a Surface RT or Pro, isn't it? Compatible out of the box with thousands of printers, scanner and every kind of peripheral you can possibly imagine.
- wlesieutre 14y ago
  Perhaps you didn't read the article, but it's about using an iPad display panel as an external monitor for a computer (via displayport). There are no other parts of the tablet, only a screen.
- astrodust 14y ago
  It's just a display. You missed the point. Also, Surface RT does not have much in the way of drivers for peripherals. It's a really broken ecosystem.
gfodor 14y ago
What's the cheapest most compact PC you could drive this level of display with? One could imagine packing them together to put together a open source, absurdly cheap (albeit bulky) iPad wannabe.
- rorrr2 14y ago
  It's not a touch panel.
- randallu 14y ago
  People have already beaten you to it, with accurate ID and everything: http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v818-mini-quad-core-7-9-inch-android-tablet-ram-2gb-wifi-dual-camera-16gb.html http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v818-mini-quad-core-7-9-inch... (they probably have one that copies the big iPad, too, with the same panel mentioned in the article...).
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    I don't understand, can the iPad3 panel be put into that or what?
navitronic 14y ago
I would love to be able to hook one of these panels up to a Mac and use it as a retina display (1024x768) for testing desktop retina usage.
malkia 14y ago
My immediate thought was - Raspberry Pi! - an LCD screen like the iPad one would be very nice for it...
- acous 14y ago
  The Pi doesn't have a DisplayPort output, I imagine it would be significantly more complicated to convert from hdmi!
  - voltagex_ 14y ago
    http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=AC1621 http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=AC1621
    - jychang 14y ago
      Well, that like doubles the price, for one. Also, it maxes out at 1080p resolution, good luck getting it to work with the ipad screen.
rocky1138 14y ago
Props for OpenTTD in the last screenshot :)
rektide 14y ago
Imagine a beowulf cluster to... power them.
deevus 14y ago
Props for using OpenTTD to test the screen :) http://www.openttd.org/ http://www.openttd.org/
zokier 14y ago
Next step: make four of them and get nice 20" 4096x3072 desktop. Of course you'd need to plan your DE to suit the tiled nature, but I imagine that it wouldn't be that bad.

276 points by noonespecial 14y ago

ttrreeww 14y ago

Do it with the Nexus 10 panel! 2560×1600!

CJefferson 14y ago
I would just like a nice way of using my nexus 10 as an external monitor -- I have tried a few things in Linux but nothing which really worked well.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  have you tried this? http://dmx.sourceforge.net/ http://dmx.sourceforge.net/ I've used it to combine macs and pc's as one big display and it worked pretty good.
  - idupree 14y ago
    I tried Xdmx a few months ago. It failed pretty badly for me, so I blogged about it ( http://idupree.dreamwidth.org/2151.html http://idupree.dreamwidth.org/2151.html ; choice quote: "Xdmx is broken in various different ways for various different people on the Web. Xdmx isn't very well maintained. It doesn't support XInput2 [1], it relies on Xinerama which is somewhat maintained but whose architecture needs improvement [2], it may be incompatible with Composite [3], it just plain segfaults for a lot of people [4], and is generally unloved [5]." — citations in blog post.)
    - jdc 14y ago
      There's also Synergy (http://synergy-foss.org http://synergy-foss.org).
navitronic 14y ago
edit: My mistake, forgot that it wasn't as wide.
- wtallis 14y ago
  The iPad has a 4:3 2048x1536 display.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

shawndumas 14y ago

Add a Leap Motion device to the mix...

ElliotH 14y ago

Does anyone know if there is some company I could send off a schematic of the adapter he uses and have one sent to me? (This would be UK, but I have no idea what term I'm searching for to get a single circuit board made)

noonespecial 14y ago
You can have just the PCB part (without components) made at any of the places on this page: http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html You'll have to buy the connectors and solder them on yourself. It sounds like an adapter kit might have a little market when shipped with a displayport plug, a small power supply, and a fully assembled PCB. Small kickstarter?
- joezydeco 14y ago
  You'll have to buy the connectors and solder them on yourself. Just FYI, those SMT flexible-printed-circuit connectors are a bitch to get soldered onto a PCB correctly. You might survive with a lot of flux and a very thin tip (and a microscope since the plastic will melt at a pretty low temp. No mistakes allowed). You might do a little better with a hot air gun. But this is not level-1 soldering.
derda 14y ago
PCB-Pool ( http://www.pcb-pool.com http://www.pcb-pool.com ) is a big player and should be shipping to the UK. But they are on the expensive side (production in germany). Batch-PCB ( http://www.batchpcb.com/ http://www.batchpcb.com/ ) takes longer (they have the boards made in china, at a reputable manufacurer), but cheaper. Itead Studio ( http://imall.iteadstudio.com/ http://imall.iteadstudio.com/ ) China, Very cheap (they buy empty spaces in fabs, you get 5 (or 10) PCBs buts its possible that one or two arent working. Bilex-Lp ( http://www.bilex-lp.com http://www.bilex-lp.com ), Bulgaria I think. Multi-CB ( http://www.multi-circuit-boards.eu/ http://www.multi-circuit-boards.eu/ ) I think they are a british company. I have no personal experience with any of those companies, though. Small batch PCB manufacturing is always expensive. Get in touch with a local hackerspace and etch it yourself ;-)

hmottestad 14y ago

I want one. Seriously though, I really want one. At 70 USD it's incredible. Dreaming of all the places I want a screen in my future house

noonespecial 14y ago
The really sad part? The entire build cost less than the replacement LCD element to revive my old thinkpad.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

That's pretty awesome, and a pretty grim testament to the lameness of Laptop makers if they aren't willing to put that panel in a laptop! (I mean seriously, you can't pull the display port connection out of an ivy bridge chipset? Something I have always felt there would be a good market for would be a compact an inexpensive LVDS (TFT-LCD connector) to some sort of driver (small FPGA or maybe SOC). You could then salvage displays from "dead" laptops (where the display works) and build up some pretty awesome sorts of deca-panel UIs :-) I'm thinking 'home star trek bridge' to a whole new level.

jacquesm 14y ago
Unfortunately the problem with my collection of dead laptops is that the majority of them have dead screens.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  For me these become servers :-) Built in UPS for the win!
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    I wonder how my co-lo would react to me attempting to rack a pile of elderly laptops with display deficiencies :) I'm going to have to try this now...
    - noonespecial 14y ago
      I put a macbook in a $39 supermicro 1u case and took it to a colo so I wouldn't have to buy an xserve to run one cheesy little osx app. It worked great.
signalsignal 14y ago
The more features which are added to a laptop, the more it tends to cost.
ajross 14y ago

silasb 14y ago

Any clues if the iPad Mini Display using the MiniDP interface?

nobodyshere 14y ago
Minis can be easily disassembled so if I were you I'd try those ifixit reviews where they do it and compare the connectors. Chances are still unknown though.

moreati 14y ago

If I'm reading http://www.ifixit.com/iPad-Parts/iPad-Retina-Display/IF116-022 http://www.ifixit.com/iPad-Parts/iPad-Retina-Display/IF116-0... correctly then all Retina iPads use the same screen i.e. 3rd gen (dock connector) and 4th gen (lightning connector) should both be compatible with this. Assuming you're brave/handy enough to cut the necessary holes to expose the connector

adamors 14y ago

Give me a Thinkpad with a screen (4:3 screen mind you) like this.

ibrahima 14y ago

Woah, $55 for that panel? Seems like it costs less than $100 including the PCB stuff, I'm really tempted to do this but I don't have the time :(. Heck, I'd buy a reasonably finished version of this for $150, maybe $200, without thinking too much. That's pretty awesome.

sinak 14y ago

I thought seriously about building and selling something similar to this about 4 years ago - really cool to see someone hack it together. Awesome work Andrzej! Compact, portable screens seem like a no-brainer to me. My MBA display is less than half an inch thick. Why does my desktop screen need to be significantly thicker? Why not use the same panels from laptops to build a display that can be used both on the desktop and for portable use? I love to use one large/two smaller screens when coding - and I want a display that I can pack into my bag along with my main display and use at a coffee shop. The panels themselves are generally cheap (it's something of a commodity market, but depending on the display size/specs they run $35 to $90) When I originally started researching this, there were two problems, both of which have been (pretty much) solved: 1 - Connectivity. Laptop panels generally use LVDS, which from my understanding are bit-reversed versions of DVI, possibly with some extra baggage. So you needed to have some intermediary processing, which was then (and is still) possible using a DisplayLink chip. The DisplayLink chip basically uses CPU power to create a virtual DVI/LVDS port over USB. The advantage of DisplayLink is that it negates the necessity for even using the Thunderbolt/DVI/Displayport output of your laptop, and allows you to simply plug in via USB and go. But the chips cost ~$15 each, require non-trivial integration, and use up CPU. As Andrzej mentions, displays are moving towards eDisplayPort, which means you can pretty much plug them in directly. 2 - Power draw. For the display to work well as a portable device, it should be possible to power it via USB alone. USB 2.0 standard is 5V and 0.5A, so 2.5W, which isn't sufficient. But USB 3.0 is 0.9A, bring the total up to 4.5W. As Andrzej mentions, the iPad display can be powered off the Displayport power (3.3W, 0.5A, ~1.9W), and with a step-up convertor you should just about be able to power the backlight up to max brightness from the USB port. Both those problems are now fixed. You can now build an external display, either using an iPad panel, or that from a 13" MBA or (possibly that of a MBP Retina, not sure about the power requirements there). Then you have an extremely slim, awesome external display that's completely portable and powered by USB. Some companies have been building crappy versions of this using DisplayLink chips, but I really want to see something with a clean, minimal design and way higher resolution. I'd try at it myself, but I'm busy trying to build software to enable better online political activism. If anyone out there is interested, I'd love to help, either with funding or advice. A few examples of products that do this (not very well) using DisplayLink chips: - http://www.mimomonitors.com http://www.mimomonitors.com - http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkVision-LT1421-Widescreen-Monitor/dp/B005L2NA54/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366665383&sr=8-1&keywords=portable+display http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkVision-LT1421-Widescreen-M... - http://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1649FWU-USB-Powered-Portable-Monitor/dp/B005SEZR0G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1366665383&sr=8-2&keywords=portable+display http://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1649FWU-USB-Powered-Portable-Moni... - http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-14-inch-Ultra-portable-Mobile-Monitor/dp/B005F0IKHA/ref=pd_cp_pc_1 http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-14-inch-Ultra-portable-Mobile-...

teeboy 14y ago

Or you could avoid all the trouble and bad a Surface RT or Pro, isn't it? Compatible out of the box with thousands of printers, scanner and every kind of peripheral you can possibly imagine.

wlesieutre 14y ago
Perhaps you didn't read the article, but it's about using an iPad display panel as an external monitor for a computer (via displayport). There are no other parts of the tablet, only a screen.
astrodust 14y ago
It's just a display. You missed the point. Also, Surface RT does not have much in the way of drivers for peripherals. It's a really broken ecosystem.

gfodor 14y ago

What's the cheapest most compact PC you could drive this level of display with? One could imagine packing them together to put together a open source, absurdly cheap (albeit bulky) iPad wannabe.

rorrr2 14y ago
It's not a touch panel.
randallu 14y ago
People have already beaten you to it, with accurate ID and everything: http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v818-mini-quad-core-7-9-inch-android-tablet-ram-2gb-wifi-dual-camera-16gb.html http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v818-mini-quad-core-7-9-inch... (they probably have one that copies the big iPad, too, with the same panel mentioned in the article...).
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I don't understand, can the iPad3 panel be put into that or what?

navitronic 14y ago

I would love to be able to hook one of these panels up to a Mac and use it as a retina display (1024x768) for testing desktop retina usage.

malkia 14y ago

My immediate thought was - Raspberry Pi! - an LCD screen like the iPad one would be very nice for it...

acous 14y ago
The Pi doesn't have a DisplayPort output, I imagine it would be significantly more complicated to convert from hdmi!
- voltagex_ 14y ago
  http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=AC1621 http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=AC1621
  - jychang 14y ago
    Well, that like doubles the price, for one. Also, it maxes out at 1080p resolution, good luck getting it to work with the ipad screen.

rocky1138 14y ago

Props for OpenTTD in the last screenshot :)

rektide 14y ago

Imagine a beowulf cluster to... power them.

deevus 14y ago

Props for using OpenTTD to test the screen :) http://www.openttd.org/ http://www.openttd.org/

zokier 14y ago

Next step: make four of them and get nice 20" 4096x3072 desktop. Of course you'd need to plan your DE to suit the tiled nature, but I imagine that it wouldn't be that bad.