Android Device as a Secondary USB Monitor

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jbright44

Member
Aug 23, 2010
25
2
So I was poking around the internet and saw the new Lenovo LT 1421 USB portable monitor.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/monitor/lt1421/

I found myself intrigued by it and was thinking about getting one as I travel a lot for business and find that not having that second monitor like I have on my desktop at the office is a major point of frustration.

I was looking at it and thinking to myself "man that looks a lot like a tablet." I got to searching the internet for ways to turn an android tablet into a secondary monitor and found Apps like iDisplay and AirDisplay (iPad only) and Screen Slider that work over wifi but those methods all seem to be really slow and laggy. It would be better than what I have for sure but given that I'm often on hotel Wifi and it requires a network connection between devices that leaves me open to some vulnerabilities I would assume.

What I'm curious about is if anyone has done any dev work to make an android tablet function like that Lenovo monitor in the link above? That would be an awesome app that I would gladly pay $10 or $20 for or more.

Anyone?
 
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Doktor Jones

Member
Jun 7, 2012
21
8
it not work on 64ibt OS :(

I know this thread's a bit old, but it came up on Google for me when I was trying to figure out how to set up my EVO 4G as a secondary display, so I figured I'd share my findings here.

The iDisplay application itself had no problem whatsoever running on my Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit laptop. The problem lies in the Android drivers.

You need to download the Android SDK and install the Google USB Drivers package within that. Once the SDK is properly installed and your device is plugged in and in debugging mode, you'll need to go into Device Manager and find your "Unknown Device" or "Android Phone" (with the little (!) overlay on its icon) and right-click it to update its drivers. Choose "Browse my computer for driver software", "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", select "Mobile Devices" from the list, click "Next", and click "Have Disk". Browse to where you installed the Android SDK and within there, browse to extras\google\usb_driver . With any luck, it will give you a couple of warnings, and then "Android Composite ADB Interface" will appear in the list -- select it, confirm the unsigned driver warning, and your phone is now properly installed! (see note at bottom)

Once it's installed, restart iDisplay on the computer so it can "see" the phone properly, then select "USB Connection" from iDisplay on the device. Voila!


NOTE: If Windows complains that the specified location does not contain drivers for the hardware when you browse to the usb_drivers folder, you may have to go to that folder and edit the .inf file. First, check the Properties of your "Unknown Device" in Device Manager, go to the "Details" tab, and select the "Hardware IDs" property -- jot down the line that has just "VID" and "PID" (and "MI", if it's there) in it. Now in the .inf file, under the [Google.NTamd64] header, duplicate one of the lines (I borrowed from the "HTC Magic" line, replacing USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C03&MI_01 with the line you wrote down from the device properties. In the case of my EVO 4G, I added the following:
Code:
; HTC EVO 4G
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8D&MI_01

Now when you attempt to install the driver, Windows should be happy (other than the unsigned driver complaints)!

Hope this helps someone out there :D
 

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    it not work on 64ibt OS :(

    I know this thread's a bit old, but it came up on Google for me when I was trying to figure out how to set up my EVO 4G as a secondary display, so I figured I'd share my findings here.

    The iDisplay application itself had no problem whatsoever running on my Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit laptop. The problem lies in the Android drivers.

    You need to download the Android SDK and install the Google USB Drivers package within that. Once the SDK is properly installed and your device is plugged in and in debugging mode, you'll need to go into Device Manager and find your "Unknown Device" or "Android Phone" (with the little (!) overlay on its icon) and right-click it to update its drivers. Choose "Browse my computer for driver software", "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", select "Mobile Devices" from the list, click "Next", and click "Have Disk". Browse to where you installed the Android SDK and within there, browse to extras\google\usb_driver . With any luck, it will give you a couple of warnings, and then "Android Composite ADB Interface" will appear in the list -- select it, confirm the unsigned driver warning, and your phone is now properly installed! (see note at bottom)

    Once it's installed, restart iDisplay on the computer so it can "see" the phone properly, then select "USB Connection" from iDisplay on the device. Voila!


    NOTE: If Windows complains that the specified location does not contain drivers for the hardware when you browse to the usb_drivers folder, you may have to go to that folder and edit the .inf file. First, check the Properties of your "Unknown Device" in Device Manager, go to the "Details" tab, and select the "Hardware IDs" property -- jot down the line that has just "VID" and "PID" (and "MI", if it's there) in it. Now in the .inf file, under the [Google.NTamd64] header, duplicate one of the lines (I borrowed from the "HTC Magic" line, replacing USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C03&MI_01 with the line you wrote down from the device properties. In the case of my EVO 4G, I added the following:
    Code:
    ; HTC EVO 4G
    %CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8D&MI_01

    Now when you attempt to install the driver, Windows should be happy (other than the unsigned driver complaints)!

    Hope this helps someone out there :D
    1
    So I was poking around the internet and saw the new Lenovo LT 1421 USB portable monitor.

    http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/monitor/lt1421/

    I found myself intrigued by it and was thinking about getting one as I travel a lot for business and find that not having that second monitor like I have on my desktop at the office is a major point of frustration.

    I was looking at it and thinking to myself "man that looks a lot like a tablet." I got to searching the internet for ways to turn an android tablet into a secondary monitor and found Apps like iDisplay and AirDisplay (iPad only) and Screen Slider that work over wifi but those methods all seem to be really slow and laggy. It would be better than what I have for sure but given that I'm often on hotel Wifi and it requires a network connection between devices that leaves me open to some vulnerabilities I would assume.

    What I'm curious about is if anyone has done any dev work to make an android tablet function like that Lenovo monitor in the link above? That would be an awesome app that I would gladly pay $10 or $20 for or more.

    Anyone?
    1
    iDisplay is available for Android, and works over USB as well as Wifi
    http://www.shapeservices.com/en/products/details.php?product=idisplay&platform=android

    It works pretty well, too - you won't be able to do anything graphically intensive, but basic stuff is fine.