DisplayLink Releases LGPL USB Graphics Code 61
iso writes "USB graphics should be coming to Linux soon: DisplayLink has released an LGPL library that talks to one of its graphics chips over a USB connection. DisplayLink aren't one of the big guys in graphics, but it's always nice to see a hardware manufacturer go the open source route. Now, when can I get one of these touchscreen MIMOs on my Linux HTPC?"
"coming" (Score:5, Informative)
Are you forgetting about sisusb x.org driver ? How is this anything other than a slashvertisement?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Damn companies trying to trick me with that whole "making stuff I want to buy" scam.
LOL.
I'm not too fond of gadgets, but admittedly, that MIMO (or at least the functionality it provides) really caught my eye. I'd imagine something like it could one day be in everyone's living room.
Then again, most of the gadgets being sold today can be a real bitch for someone other than a Windows or Mac user. Even the simplest device, if advertised as standards compliant and requiring no special drivers, usually means "
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Reports also suggest [ipnom.com] that the PL-2303 is supported in FreeBSD. You can get an adapter based on it from Sparkfun [sparkfun.com].
It's a nuisance not to be able to just grab anything; but it looks like you do have options.
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Oh very supported! (Score:2)
pl-2303 is very supported. FutureDial cables for cell phones typically use them.
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Thanks for the comments. And thanks to everyone else that replied!
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Well it worked... I've already used up all my actual graphics outputs and now I'm trying to think of an excuse (other than "it's cool") to get an expensive USB touchscreen.
Damn companies trying to trick me with that whole "making stuff I want to buy" scam.
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Well how about a Home media and automation controller?
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The Displaylink driver accomidates a lot of USB display adapters and notebook docking stations made by a variety of manufacturers. HP, Samsung, EVGA, etc... have USB display devices that can use this driver. There's not much to bitch about here.
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Give K-Y® a try!
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Your point is valid, in that displaylink wasn't the first, by several years, to do USB graphics or the first to do USB graphics that work on Linux; but, because of the current marketshare, a displaylink driver is now bigger news than sisusb for most applications.
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This is big, because the eVGA UV Plus USB videocards are powered by this company's chips, and those cards can sometimes be found for as little as $20.
They are now (in theory) Windows, OSX, and Linux compatible.
This could potentially be a very cheap way to add more monitors to a setup, regardless of OS, for use in mostly static tasks like programming, spreadsheets, browsing websites, etc.
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It could also be used for say a large digital picture frame.
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More the merry-er'er...er. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's always good to see more hardware developers opening their drivers to Linux development. I think more and more companies are realizing that linux desktops are not going to be the defacto standard, but that Linux will be in a lot of gear that could use their devices. Getting their drivers and devices cozy with linux only works in everybody's favor.
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Maybe they're starting to understand that most Linux users are just the type of people who like buying gadgets.
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Maybe they think this could be useful for servers and embedded as wel, where there is a lot of stuff running Linux.
max resolution? (Score:1)
I mean, feeding my monitor/tv through USB would be nice, but there must be some technical glitch like lack of bandwidth for higher resolutions and frame rates.
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One of the guys here was trying DisplayLink over wireless USB - driving a high res picture at close to real time. It actually does a pretty good job, though the drivers are still a mess and really hack around the display stack.
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Is it any more then a small display gimmick ?
I mean, feeding my monitor/tv through USB would be nice, but there must be some technical glitch like lack of bandwidth for higher resolutions and frame rates.
Of course it's not enough bandwidth for streaming video, but it's more than adequate for browsing the web (sans YouTube) or (gasp) working on an extra (up to 1600x1200) monitor...
More info can be found here [displaylink.com].
np: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Streets Of Philedelphia (Advance Base Battery Life)
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Agreed, given the bandwidth of USB, it can't do a good frame rate at any decent resolution without sacrificing color depth, but it is plenty for office work.
After upgrading the last office holdouts to LCDs, I saw a Tritton widget on clearance. It did 1600x1200 @ 60hz, could go larger with a drop in frame rate or color depth, but I was only replacing 17" CRTs. It was an easy way to get some more screens on my desk:)
These look to be a bit better. Hopefully run cooler, mine gets rather toasty.
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I don't know what level this works in, but a decade ago we were running six X terminals with around a 1024x768[1] displays over a single, shared, 10Mb/s network. USB 1.0 gives this much bandwidth and USB 2 gives over an order of magnitude more. If you are streaming commands like 'draw line' and 'composite texture' then USB 2 provides far more than enough bandwidth. It's also enough to stream decent quality compressed video, so if the CPU can encode the video streams and the USB device can decode them you
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Maybe look at these video's ?:
http://www.displaylink.com/how_it_works.html [displaylink.com]
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OK, for those that don't want to watch the vids. Here is a summary: it's running several video's of which one was fullscreen. I don't know if the monitors were daisy-chained.
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They could have done this a few years ago before the push to HD. Now I think what you'd want to do is make a USB 3 dongle that could output HD video and audio over HDMI.
USB 3 is just around the bend with up to ~400MBPS (yes bytes) throughput. Still limited to 5v and .15A though. A lot of things that right now need a couple of PCIe lanes and an internal card are going to be very doable over USB on new computers come this time next year.
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IEEE1394c at S3200 or 3200Mbps using the same wiring as 9-pin IEEE1394b S800 cables, is going to be have more throughput, carry more power, and have less CPU load than USB3 at 4.8Gbs, USB3's actual rated speed. The new cable requirements applicable to USB3 also makes USB3 cables use essentially the same type of cable as IEEE1394c, negating any sort of benefit with respect to cost that USB 2.0 has. Cost refers to the cost of silicon on the device, the cost of routing the traces on a PCB, as well as the cos
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They could have done this a few years ago before the push to HD. Now I think what you'd want to do is make a USB 3 dongle that could output HD video and audio over HDMI.
As I said in another post, it depends on how clever the drivers are. If you have HD video, you typically have it in H.264 or MPEG-2 formats, and most GPUs can decode these in hardware. If you're using the operating system's interfaces for this then the software is going to be pushing the raw compressed video stream to the driver, and the driver can just push it over the bus.
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I've always wondered why nobody ever stepped up and this, innexpensively.
Look at TI's DaVinci lineup. It's supposed to be small enough to be used in digital cameras (I've only seen it in the OSD 2.0 preview units) and sips power, while being fast enough to encode 720p60 h.264 at real-time. I think there's a beefier DaVinci that can do 1080p30 h.264. (and some devices like Leadtek's Cell card can do it faster than real time at 1080p.)
The major problem with them, other than availability, is cost. Seriously, I
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HD PVR-1212 http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html [hauppauge.com]
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR [mythtv.org]
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Is it any more then a small display gimmick ?
Maybe, but now that these screens seem to get linux support you can also do some pretty cool stuff with them. Get a really small ARM board like a Gumstix Overo or Beagleboard and you can make a pretty cool computer out of it that acts as a digital picture frame, clock, micro webserver, RSS reader, whatever you can think of.
I've actually been looking for a small USB screen that works with Linux for ages, so this is pretty cool news. Maybe now I can put my ARM board to use as a wireless DPF annex information
Get a Chumby. (Score:2)
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I've looked at the chumby, but I don't like the design and form factor. Also you'd more or less need to 'hack' it to have it do more than it's supposed to do, which is showing chumby applets in Flash. But they're nice devices though, only not what I'm looking for.
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External small displays with dvi-d are hard to find and ridiculously expensive, I've not found a single one for less then $300. The Samsung U70 7" screen I can get for less than $80. The USB connection is not really an issue, as with my revision of the Beagleboard you need to attach a powered HUB anyway, to power the board and to get the port in USB host mode (it's an USB on-the-go port that acts as a slave otherwise).
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Speaking of the BeagleBoard, there's no way to pass audio through that HDMI connector, is there? Possibly splice HDMI and a 3.5mm connector together?
That's probably the single most dissapointing part about the beagleboard, the lack of audio over HDMI. I know it's licensing issues, but it would have made the beagleboard the best HTPC for sub-1080p setups.
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Is it any more then a small display gimmick ?
Obviously it doesn't have the bandwidth to be high performance, but nowadays you even get "docking stations" (I use the scare quotes because I was horrified when I realized this) that use a single USB connection (i.e monitor, network, keboard, mouse - the whole shebang over a single USB connection).
If you've just doing business graphics I guess it's OK. Not really meant for viewing video or playing games, etc.
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I have a Samsung USB monitor which is 800x480 with 32 bit colour.
You can play video on it without problems. It doesn't even tax your CPU that much.
Of more use though is having a second screen to keep things like an IM client, system stats, RSS feeds and info like keyboard shortcuts on. I have a 24" main monitor which allows me to have code on one side and a datasheet/web browser/more code on the other side which is something I can't recommend enough, but even so it's nice to have "non-work" related things a
USB docking stations? (Score:2)
Does that mean that USB docking stations are now supported?
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It means that video through usb for devices (like notebook docking stations) that use Displaylink are supported.
VERY glad this came along... (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing that's sucked about all this is I have the computer underneath a seat, with a regular ol' LCD panel bolted into the middle of the car, running off of a 12v/110v inverter. (the dash has been torn out so it's using the me
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Before you get too excited.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nearly useless.. (Score:5, Informative)
..for several reasons:
- they left out the compression
- they have deliberately obfuscated the init sequences (haha, big deal, see below)
- and they didn't put in anything beyond the stuff which we already
reverse-engineered in January (see http://floe.butterbrot.org/displaylink/ [butterbrot.org] ).
Floe
Actually it's really useful ... (Score:1, Informative)
... and they already addresses all of those concerns on the first post to their mailing list [freedesktop.org].
System requirements? (Score:2)
Anyone have an Idea about what are system requirements?