Using A 10 Euro Adapter To Emulate A Nexdock
August 2021
The Nexdock is a Laptop like dock that you can plug your phone into and have a desktop like experience without needing to buy a complete Laptop. The Nextdock and similar devices feature a HDMI or USB-C input that you can use to connect any device to it. If you connect your phone via USB-C the Nexdock charges the device, acts as a monitor and acts as a keyboard and mouse.
When i ordered a cheap generic HDMI recorder (not the model I used) to capture some Video from an old camera I tought that I might be able to use the same adapter to turn an old Laptop into something similar to a Nexdock. There are of course other ways to get video from another device to play on your laptop like using VNC to stream the screen over the Network but they come with performance and stability penalties and might reguire a dummy display adapter.
If you want a permament solution and have the skills to implement it you can look into replacing the laptops internals with a display driver board for its internal display. This guide might be a starting point This will offer better latancy and Image quality but considering the work that goes into such a DIY project it will probablly be easier and better to buy a Nexdock. If you simply need a non-portable screen for ~30€ and already have an old/broken Laptop this is probably the better option. My seccond monitor was built from an old Laptop screen and has now worked for half a year.
Otherwise if you:
- only ocasionally need a portable screen
- don’t care about a little bit of latancy
- don’t care about compression artifacts
- want to tinker with a device without needing to plug into your main display
- can’t destroy an old Laptop
Then this is probably a good solution for you.
The following guide on how to set this up is meant for Linux but similar software probably exists for Windows.
Table of contents
guvcview
Guview is a programm that can display and record the output of v4l2 devices. The preview runs at a good resolution and with very litte latancy. You simply need to plug the adapter into your Laptop,selct it in guvcview and you should be good to go. If it seems like the resolution is to low you have to change the settings of guvcview to the same settings as the device you plugged into the adapter is outputting.
Mouse/Keyboard passtrough
seccond laptop
If you want to use this to connect two laptops and want to use the keyboard/mouse laptop then the programm your looking for is (Synergy)[https://symless.com/synergy] or its open source fork Barrier. If both laptops are on the same wifi network then you can use this to connect the laptops. Otherwise can use one of your devices as a wifi-hotspot to make the connection. Barrier should also work for Rapsberry Pis.
Android
If your using an Android device you can use DeskDock to pass the mouse to your Android device but keep in mind that this requires a usbconnection between the phone and your laptop. Support for external screens on android also varies a lot but Samsung smartphones for example have called DEX which gives you a full desktop enviroment.