Use a Raspberry Pi to control and monitor your PC - Raspberry Pi General

I had an idea the other day. I saw a video of someone connecting a display to their computer and putting it inside the case to show their PC diagnostics. My thought would be that if you could connect a Raspberry Pi--complete with a touch interface--to your PC, you could monitor your temps, frequencies, RGB lighting, and fan speeds, and change things as needed or wanted with say a slider or something.
My main question is if this is:
1) Possible.
2) Easily or somewhat easy to achieve.
I don't see a product that can do this on the market and I think it's a great idea. I know I have seen someone make a custom Touch interface for their vehicle before that controlled the radio and gave system diagnostics. Seems kind of similar to me.

Related

USB Host Controller - Looking into android controlled robotic projects

Hello everyone. I have been searching for threads all day and have not found much information about being able to hook up devices into some kinda of USB interface or serial interface on Android devices. The closest thing I can find is this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1202082
There has to be a host controller on these phones right? I would think that if there is a micro SD read reader on the phone, there would be one. Am I the only one thinking this? What is the best way to find out?
My inspiration comes from the ArduPilot project . I think this is pretty sweet but I think it could be way more powerful with a full operating system versus a limited micro controller. An additional fun link of, what most can imagine, my final goal: http://www.wimp.com/helmetcam/
I am posting this on the Evo 4G general thread due to owning it and it would be easy to disassemble, if there is something I need to look into.
I want to look finding (or creating) a robotics application for the android OS to map *connected* servo controllers (not bluetooth connected, Arduino powered, etc..) that will also allow remote users to control the phone multiple threads to control the UV or UAV. Examples: 1: Flying the RC Plane while viewing the video stream on the phone's multiple cameras (integrated or attached). 2: Executing autopilot application and monitoring it's progress through two-way communication from a controlling "base" station (PC, Server, Tablet, etc..). Maybe executing multiple RC vehicles at once.
I have a feeling that this would help many others with other types of monitoring projects (What comes to mind: Home security, Car Security, garden monitoring, etc..) This could also help the creation of other commercial products.
Any input and direction you can give would be appreciated.

Home Automation [Ard vs Rasp vs IOIO]

Hello,
I would like to hear some opinions about my personal want-sth-to-do project. I want to use NFC to open my house doors, including the front door, garage and bedrooms door. In addition, I want to be able to control my air-conditioning system, TV and audio system. I want to integrate some sort of IP/CCTV cameras into my personal system. Just to improve the system, I will develop a Android App to control it via an API.
So, to make this project possible, come to my mind three ways:
1. [Arduino]
- Using the Arduino and its shields to develop the entire system. It will take a while and be hard in some points such as IPCAM recording.
2. [RaspberryPi + Arduino]
- Using the RaspberryPi connected to some Arduino shields using the GertDuino (GPIO expansion boards that make RaspberryPi compatible with Arduino Shields).
- This options seems to be the best option for now, but I dont know if RaspberryPi is able to handle the entire system.
3. [IOIO-OTG]
- IOIO-OTG is a board that make any android device as the heart of the system, making you just program in Java and control the GPIO and UART.
- The benefit is that I can develop it using some Android Stick, however, I need to search about available shields for it.
In addition, I need to think how to separate the core of the system from the sensors such as nfc readers. I do not think that wiring over the entire house is the best way... but I didn't found any wireless sensors...
Someone want to give some opinion? I will update the thread with the sensors I'm looking around and so...
I'd go the arduino (maybe more than one) + raspberry-pi (maybe more than one) way.
the ioio seems to be some µc that runs a firmware that connects to android and provides all i/o pins to android... so nothing you couldn't do yourself with an arduino or something similar.
I'd start with the devices you want to connect. Air conditioning might be controlled using Infrared emitters - would that work?
NFC Readers can be built from an arduino AFAIK, but you'll need some sort of field bus or wireless connection between all the parts...
SkzBR said:
Hello,
I would like to hear some opinions about my personal want-sth-to-do project. I want to use NFC to open my house doors, including the front door, garage and bedrooms door. In addition, I want to be able to control my air-conditioning system, TV and audio system. I want to integrate some sort of IP/CCTV cameras into my personal system. Just to improve the system, I will develop a Android App to control it via an API.
So, to make this project possible, come to my mind three ways:
1. [Arduino]
- Using the Arduino and its shields to develop the entire system. It will take a while and be hard in some points such as IPCAM recording.
2. [RaspberryPi + Arduino]
- Using the RaspberryPi connected to some Arduino shields using the GertDuino (GPIO expansion boards that make RaspberryPi compatible with Arduino Shields).
- This options seems to be the best option for now, but I dont know if RaspberryPi is able to handle the entire system.
3. [IOIO-OTG]
- IOIO-OTG is a board that make any android device as the heart of the system, making you just program in Java and control the GPIO and UART.
- The benefit is that I can develop it using some Android Stick, however, I need to search about available shields for it.
In addition, I need to think how to separate the core of the system from the sensors such as nfc readers. I do not think that wiring over the entire house is the best way... but I didn't found any wireless sensors...
Someone want to give some opinion? I will update the thread with the sensors I'm looking around and so...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find your ambition high. But as someone running an Insteon Smart Home with an ISY994i, I can't help but feel you are trying to make a fairly cost effective and secure option more expensive and less secure. Mobilinc integrates with tasker, so you could set it up to unlock doors and stuff pretty easy with NFC.
Best of luck with your search.
me likes
DThought said:
I'd go the arduino (maybe more than one) + raspberry-pi (maybe more than one) way.
the ioio seems to be some µc that runs a firmware that connects to android and provides all i/o pins to android... so nothing you couldn't do yourself with an arduino or something similar.
I'd start with the devices you want to connect. Air conditioning might be controlled using Infrared emitters - would that work?
NFC Readers can be built from an arduino AFAIK, but you'll need some sort of field bus or wireless connection between all the parts...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with DThought. Including a Raspberry Pi would allow some pretty intense processing power.
If you want to limit the amount of wiring you do, you could actually use a USB wifi dongle on the Raspberry Pi. You could then make some simple protoboards/PCBs with an Arduino with a wireless shield for each thing you want to control. This would likely be a more expensive solution than plain wiring but it would allow a lot of flexibility. Especially if you had each of the Arduino clients very similar so that they are interchangeable.
You could also try using Xbee Arduino wireless shields in case you don't want to use regular wifi.
This sounds like a very good project. I hope it works out for you. :laugh:

Mirror/cast content from Nvidia Shield TV to Nexus 6p

Hi. This is one of those things that must be so simple, but a Google search just comes up with pages and pages of totally unrelated nonsense. Hoping you guys can help me.
All I want to do is be able to mirror my Nvidia Shield TV to my smartphone screen. Not the phone to the NVidia Shield. Like a PS Remote Play but for the NvS TV. My room is within remote and gamepad range so an on screen pad is not necessary. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks
(P.S if anyone knows of any Kodi addons with 4k content...that would be awesome! - there were 2 but they have been discontinued)
Any luck or good leads?
"Allcast reciever"?
What app or apps are you suppose trying to get to your phone?
I've been looking into doing the same thing but to a note 4. I think I found a few ways that seems like they would work for media streaming if your Shield had root access or unrestricted app installation options. Things like allcast reciever and other casting options. They all seemed to have too much latency for gaming if that is what you were wanting to do.
I'm not sure if a chromecast can output audio and video using the HDMI port but that might work if it can do that?
The other issue with pulling this off os that I think the solution needs to be some sort of universal screen and audio mirroring, like googlecast, that doesn't care about what app it is mirroring. Otherwise you'll have to rely on the app that is on the shield being capable of casting, and the Nvidia Hub isn't as far as I know.
I search for terms like: Android to android screen mirroring, android remote display, android remote access, etc....nothing so far.
My most promising hope for doing something like this now are:
1. Making my phone somehow act as or emulate a display, TV, Monitor in a way that can utilize the output from the HDMI port of a SHIELD device. This would bypass all the various issues and complications with specific application capabilities and restrictions, though it is just a idea about how to work around the app issues, I have no idea if this would even be possible. I also don't know if anything that is coming out the HDMI port has any sort of HDCP protection. I would assume that some things would but I would also assume that most of those specific things are the kinds of things. I would just be casting via media players anyway.
2. I have a really REALLY fast LAN network, and I know I am able to remotely access my PC in various ways that are low latency and high performance as far as display and audio are concerned. So, assuming the latency could be kept low enough I have thought about working on getting what I want to access on an Nvidia shield device to my PC running Windows 10, then I can just access that from my phone.
I don't know if you're familiar with that saying about engineering which basically says: "It's not a question of what you want to do but how much you can pay to do it." I say that because there seem to be a couple of fairly good high end Headset based displays out there. One is called the "gylph" or something like that and I have looked fairly thoroughly into one or two others that seemed to be high quality and have reliable reviews and testing available to find online. Some didn't seem available for another year or two, and even then you are going to be dropping $500 to $1,000 for them.
3. Using something like Tridef 3d and a head mounted VR headset based display. I was able to get that working pretty well without too much effort from my PC. The Tri-def software creates a side by side view of the application that you tell it to from your PC. So I can basically get a display output from just about anything on my PC and use it with just about anything they can recieve display output from my PC or remotely view my computers display with low latency. I haven't looked too much to see if something similar to this software is available that can run on a shield device. I would assume they are powerful enough even if you had to scale things down just a little bit.
The kind of set up that could send from your SHIELD, to your PC, to your Head Mounted Display or VR headset could be have some interesting advantages if the overall network latency was low enough. Having the rendering of the initial source on one device and the side by side display conversion on another could have a lot advantages. I own a Samsung gear VR innovator edition headset that I can use with my note 4, but if I want to use it for more than 20 minutes I need to pre-cool my phone in the freezer and to get any significant amount of time I think I would need to develop fairly high performance cooling system. That obviously isn't very easy to do when you need it to interface with a phone you use daily and also be small and light enough to attach to something you're wearing on your face. The point is that doing anything more than receiving and audio and video stream on your phone is going to be very resource intensive for it to handle. Even maxing out the gigabit Wi-Fi on my land for my phone makes it really warm and consumes the battery at a very high rate.
Whatever you do if it is helpful I have connected a pluggable USB 2.0 to Gigabit LAN adapter to the shield portable and it more than doubled the network performance. I'm not sure what the actual LAN performance is on the SHIELD
TV but even if you didn't need to increase it you might be able to reduce latency by by separating the total network load between the internal Gigabit Ethernet port and a separate USB 2.0 or 3.0 lan adapter. I don't know enough about androids capabilities to use more than one network adapter simultaneously four separate purposes to know if that is possible.
Well, congratulations if you've made it this far into my post. I have obviously been exploring this kind of thing for a while but there is a lot potential out there and a lot things that I don't know about or understand thoroughly enough. It's nice to know I'm not completely alone in this specific ambition. Hopefully we can gather a few more people and make some progress with this thread!
...wow
Wow that is an indepth reply. Thanks!
I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. You obviously have a better chance of pulling it off than I do! (I did read it all lol)
I'm basically wanting to be able to mirror the screen like the PS4 remote play. Not just specific apps.
The only reason I know it's possible is that the Playstation 4 handles it remarkably well. No noticable lag as long as you have a good wifi router. Those guys at Sony must be using some kind of black magic. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be the one who figures this out. I'm in no way a software or network engineer....I am an electrical engineering student though.
Anyway it's also good for me to hear that I'm not alone here. I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia were working on this right now or at some point in the near future. And I sold the 6P and bought a Note 5 by the way. Wasn't a fan of the 6P at all.
Anyone get this to work or find another solution?
Thanks

Need help: repurpose old android screen as secondary touch monitor (wired)

I've a galaxy tab 2 7.0 which is beyond repair and hard bricked, I was wondering if I could use it's display and touch as a secondary monitor for windows, with a reasonable response time, for productivity. It would be a tremendous help.
deleted
Dhgr8 said:
Try iDisplay
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please read the post before reply. Device is hard bricked. Software solution not applicable. Hardware solution required.
You probably already gave up on this, but I am answering this so other people get at least sortof an answer.
For the display alone you could try to use a display driver board (Just google for "make your own monitor, DIY LCD controller board" Sadly can't post links yet..)
Will be hard as soldering to the connectors of the display is annoying/nearly impossible.
Next would be touch, and there you would also need to find a driver board (designing this yourself is way out of the scope usually) and then calibrate the coordinates. (Probably okay under linux/unix, next to impossible under windows)
Overall cost would probably surpass what you would pay for a cheap, new device which could run a software solution. (which would be more portable and cleaner looking.)
If you are a linux user, you can tether the tablet to your pc, get a vnc server running on it and then stream the feed via ADB over the usb-cable to your tablet. (ADB can connect ports from your tablet to your labtop and vice versa). This means that you dont have to pay anything for an app, and also do custom stuff like just sharing certain parts of the screen to the tablet etc...

Headless Android Phone?

I've done some Google-ing and can't seem to find what I am looking for. Is there anyone that makes a headless Android phone? I keep coming up with project ideas where it would be nice to run an Android app remotely, without a display. It should reduce the size of the formfactor if there wasn't a display, camera, and case and could even use an external battery.
Latest thing I would like to try: mount headless device on drone and remote control it with VNC over LTE.
I also keep coming up with ideas that would use Bluetooth hardware but would like to access it beyond Bluetooth range.

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