Multi monitor arm computer?

[Will McElderry]

Hi All,

I'm looking to downgrade my desktop power requirements to an arm board
probably (accepting that is likely a downgrade in cpu too) but I can't
accept loosing my 2nd monitor.

Has anyone got experience of solving this problem?

I am defaulting to a USB to HDMI adapter on a Raspberry Pi 3 (or Orange
Pi 2 Plus etc), but would appreciate any input if anyone has any
experience or comments!

Thanks,

W.

[Alistair MacDonald]

I don't know if this helps but I have a mini Atom based computer that uses the same power as the Pi. It is not the most powerful system in the world but it is good enough to play video and brows the web. You can get units with an internal and external display so it would not surprise me if you could get one with two HDMI ports.

  Alistair

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[Dan Nixon]

If you can find a DSI to VGA/DVI/HDMI device then that will probably be your best option for high throughput graphics, at the cost of probably being more of an arse to configure.

If you want decent graphics you should look at the Pine A64, essentially this is the same as a Pi 3 but with a better graphics processor and lower price.

Dan

[Dan Nixon]

Another option would be a HDMI "splitter" (not sure of the correct word, it splits a side by side or interlaced video into two separate streams).

They were popular a while ago for adding up to 3 additional monitors to laptops I believe.

If you have a HDMI port that can output at a high enough resolution then that may be the best option.

Again the A64 would be the better option supporting up to 4K as opposed to the Pi 3 that can only manage 1080p.

Dan

[David Pye]

Hi Will,

Being slightly inquisitive, but what's your aim here?  To reduce mains power consumption or something else?

Cheers

David

--

[Will McElderry]

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies!

David: My aims are two fold:

- reduce mains draw (be more efficient)

- reduce heat and noise production (more comfortable)

I guess I'll probably WoL my old machine for more cpu power intensive tasks, and move it somewhere further away...

Thanks Alistair and Dan - I'll look in to those options...

W.

[Gregory Fenton]

Somewhere round here I have a spare developer's version of the board Dan suggested (Pine A64). If you can afford to wait a couple of weeks I will dig it out for you.

Greg

https://www.pine64.com/

[Will McElderry]

Thanks Greg, that sounds great if you're not using it - I'll drop you a line if I find anything in the mean time...

W.

[Gregory Fenton]

Can you shout loudly some point after next Friday when I return from holiday please? Little old forgetful me and all that :P

Greg

[Will McElderry]

Hi All,

An update on my multi-monitor low-powered computer plan...

I've just gone and bought a USB 2.0 'external graphics card' from DisplayLink.  I couldn't find a 'frame/display splitter' or DSI to HDMI converter (though I gave up quite easily...)

I've had it working with a pi3. I've not done much with it: just loaded Xorg, i3 and a rxvt... it seemed fast enough for that (as expected) which is ~80% of my computer use, but I've seen some forum comments that it becomes unreliable when doing something as crazy as run a web browser and visit a page with graphics on it.  I've not got done that yet, but I did notice that when I asked the pi to power off, it seemed to be successful, then fell in to a reboot cycle.  Less than ideal!

I've also noticed on other occasions sporadic hardware issues such as wifi or ethernet stopping working seemingly without cause on the RasPi 3, so instead of making my self comfortable with a pi3 when there are already hints of unreliability, I thought I may plump for the Pine A64 and hope it is a more reliable system.

Greg: Is it still convenient to borrow your pine A64 board, or should I order myself one?

Thanks,

Will.

[David Pye]

The other nuisance I found is that some apps I like (yes,chrome, so sue me..) arent available on ARM.  I was playing with the idea of using some kind of pi setup for a portable workstatipn and that was one of a number of things that killed it for me...

Plus your energy saving is just going to equate into using more electricity to heat your room from the heater instead of the CPU heatsink ;-)

David

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[Gregory Fenton]

Hi Will

The board is sat on the side, no problem at all. I will drop it into your box when I pass.

Greg

[Dan Nixon]

There are builds of Chromium for ARM though, not quite the same but close enough maybe?

Dan

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[David Pye]

But I like big brother knowing all my usernames and password and web history ;-)

Dan

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[Thomas Oldbury]

Your typical computer monitor (22", LED 1080p) draws around 20 watts, so two monitors will draw roughly 10x what a Pi 3 would draw. Fairly insignificant.

I would suggest you look at a low power x86 board, an Atom or something similar, many of those have HDMI plus DisplayPort or DVI which can be interchanged for HDMI as well. ARM with two video outputs may be hard to find.

[Will McElderry]

On 09/09/16 18:03, Thomas Oldbury wrote:

Your typical computer monitor (22", LED 1080p) draws around 20 watts, so two monitors will draw roughly 10x what a Pi 3 would draw. Fairly insignificant.

I would suggest you look at a low power x86 board, an Atom or something similar, many of those have HDMI plus DisplayPort or DVI which can be interchanged for HDMI as well. ARM with two video outputs may be hard to find.

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Hi Thomas, thanks for your input - Alistair also recommended an Atom based solution, and I have to admit I haven't really looked for one yet. I suspect an ARM based board will be enough for most of my needs, and where it's not it will be illuminating to discover - then I'll upgrade...

I like your point about monitor power draw.  I think the analysis is not as clear cut because I'm hoping to leave my desktop machine on 24x7 - I'll leave it performing some basic tasks (e.g. filing email) and being accessible remotely, so monitors will be off most of the time, but it's certainly a factor that will limit my maximum reduction in power use.

If only there was some large e-paper displays with fast updates... Pixel Qi looked interesting a few years ago, but went out of business and sold the tech to a 3rd party. They did 7" and 10", but were talking of bigger versions.  Any other suggestions to watch would be appreciated!


David: I may need a heater in winter, but I'd have to buy an air con for a few days in summer to be comfortable as it is. My office has been measured at ~23:00 as 26C  when the day time high outside was ~22C!

W.

[Jon Davies]

If this is still a valid thread...

http://hackerboards.com/i-mx6-based-mini-itx-sbc-does-triple-displays/

...this may fit the bill.

--

Cheers,

Jon.

[Will McElderry]

Very interesting, thanks!

I've been using my Pi3 as a desktop for a while (about a month?) with an external USB2 display adapter (and powered USB hub). It does 90% of what I need, so I have to improve something, but it's close!

The biggest problem is RAM - 1GB is just not enough for today's stupidly hungry web-browsers. That caused reboots until I discovered how to set up control groups to restrict a process' access to CPU or RAM (very useful, but has it's costs - ask if you want to know more!)

I'm resisting a rant about how poorly coded firefox is for memory management - it doesn't clear any of what (I assume) must be some pretty large caches when it can't allocate more RAM, it doesn't refuse to open a new tab, it just crashes. Rubbish!

Trust me, that's the short version!

Beyond that, it's only reliability that lets it down - every now and then when it's busy & maxing out storage access it decides to reboot without warning or any indication of what the cause is.

All in all, I'll have a look for another option in the coming few months, so thanks for the suggestion!

W.

----- Reply message -----
From: "Jon Davies" <jon.d...@gmail.com>
To: <north-ea...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Makers] Re: Multi monitor arm computer?

[Jon Davies]

Fair point on RAM.  I think the most recent boosts in performance on Pi (and other Arm SoC's) have been lacking in the area of RAM.  It shouldn't be the case that apps get slack on memory management though!

[Dan Nixon]

It shouldn't just reboot when out of RAM.

Do you have a swap partition?

Also, just use the Lynx browser, it's the future!

Dan

[Alistair MacDonald]

Do we know what price point they come in at?

Also Dan, who is seriously going to use the Lynx browser other than
you and perhaps, err, Will. Okay, you make a strong argument in this
scenario. :-)

Alistair

[Dan Nixon]

I found the thing I was talking about!

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/

Dan