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DisplayLink Releases LGPL USB Graphics Code

Posted by timothy on from the more-car-computer-lust dept.

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?"

49 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. "coming" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you forgetting about sisusb x.org driver ? How is this anything other than a slashvertisement?

    1. Re:"coming" by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    2. Re:"coming" by value_added · · Score: 1

      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 "Might work in Linux, but probably won't for the BSDs". On that note, if anyone knows of a USB-serial adapter that works in FreeBSD, my notebook would love to hear from you.

    3. Re:"coming" by Molochi · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
    4. Re:"coming" by Kuciwalker · · Score: 2, Informative

      Have you ever read the code for that? It's impenetrable! (I've tried to port it to other OS's.)

    5. Re:"coming" by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      For whatever reason(I don't know if the chips are cheaper, work better, are marketed better, or what) SIS usb based stuff seems to be on its way to obscurity and death, while displaylink based stuff is becoming more common.

      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.

    6. Re:"coming" by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      I don't have firsthand experience; but FTDI says that there are drivers for its USB/serial products for FreeBSD. FTDI based usb/serial converters are reasonably common. Both Sparkfun and Adafruit industries use them a lot with their arduino related products.

      Reports also suggest that the PL-2303 is supported in FreeBSD. You can get an adapter based on it from Sparkfun.

      It's a nuisance not to be able to just grab anything; but it looks like you do have options.

    7. Re:"coming" by Night64 · · Score: 1
      It really worked. The link on TFA shows that the Mimo Monitor is sold out.

      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.

      --
      Grey's Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
    8. Re:"coming" by BikeHelmet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    9. Re:"coming" by Sinbios · · Score: 1

      Give K-Y® a try!

      --
      Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
    10. Re:"coming" by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      It could also be used for say a large digital picture frame.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    11. Re:"coming" by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Well how about a Home media and automation controller?

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    12. Re:"coming" by Xabraxas · · Score: 1

      If the PL-2303 is supported then just go to your local Best Buy and pick up a Dynex branded USB-Serial converter. I am using one on Linux and it is a PL-2303.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    13. Re:"coming" by sonic74 · · Score: 1

      Or a terminal: http://sven.killig.de/openwrt/slugterm_dl.html

  2. More the merry-er'er...er. by binaryspiral · · Score: 4, 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.

    1. Re:More the merry-er'er...er. by AmyRose1024 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Maybe they're starting to understand that most Linux users are just the type of people who like buying gadgets.

    2. Re:More the merry-er'er...er. by Lennie · · Score: 1

      Maybe they think this could be useful for servers and embedded as wel, where there is a lot of stuff running Linux.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  3. max resolution? by moon3 · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:max resolution? by Tawnos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:max resolution? by Briareos · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      np: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Streets Of Philedelphia (Advance Base Battery Life)

      --

      "I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole

    3. Re:max resolution? by N4EA · · Score: 3, Informative

      I use one of their units to drive a second 22" display from my Macbook Pro. It works wonderfully for everything EXCEPT watching videos. Terminal sessions, Eclipse coding environments, email etc are seamless on it. As another poster said though, it doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with video very well, but I knew that going in and that wasn't my reason for buying it.

    4. Re:max resolution? by John+Betonschaar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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 display :-)

    5. Re:max resolution? by SpinyNorman · · Score: 1

      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.

    6. Re:max resolution? by Zerth · · Score: 1

      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.

    7. Re:max resolution? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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 should be able to do full-motion video too.

      It all depends on how the driver is written. If it looks like a dumb framebuffer thne you will need a lot more bandwidth than if it looks like a complex GPU. As a simple example, consider how text is rendered in modern X11 (and on OS X, and I think on Vista). The glyhps for the font are sent to the display, pushed into texture memory on the GPU, and then drawing them is a single command to composite the texture onto the framebuffer at a specific offset. This means that drawing an antialiased character only requires a few bytes of data to be sent to the display. The same is true for drawing common user interface elements; the images used to draw them will be cached in texture memory. Unless you are doing 3D work, you are using a lot more bandwidth between your GPU and monitor than you are between your CPU and GPU.

      [1] I can't remember exactly what it was; some weird Sun single-scan monitors with a resolution I've not seen anywhere else.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    8. Re:max resolution? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      If you're using a BeagleBoard, you'd be better off using its built-in DVI-D output for video than a USB adaptor. That leaves the USB adaptor free for connecting a USB network device.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    9. Re:max resolution? by Lennie · · Score: 1

      Maybe look at these video's ?:
      http://www.displaylink.com/how_it_works.html

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
    10. Re:max resolution? by Lennie · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
    11. Re:max resolution? by John+Betonschaar · · Score: 1

      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).

    12. Re:max resolution? by Jorophose · · Score: 1

      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.

    13. Re:max resolution? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      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 available at a glance.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    14. Re:max resolution? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      No, the BeagleBoard doesn't really have HDMI. It just has DVI, but they use an HDMI connector because it's smaller.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. USB docking stations? by speedtux · · Score: 1

    Does that mean that USB docking stations are now supported?

    1. Re:USB docking stations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It means that video through usb for devices (like notebook docking stations) that use Displaylink are supported.

  5. VERY glad this came along... by Thantik · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm actually ecstatic that this has come along. I have a small computer in my car and I've been working ever so slowly using an arduino kit to interface into my old analog dials (86 Fiero), and I can at the moment, display RPM, Speed, and I'm working on temperature/oil pressure.

    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 metal-reinforced parts of the car)

    I've wanted to be able to throw a screen in the middle of the steering wheel (and eventually I hope to put like 4-5 of them horizontally within a new dash once I can find a fiberglass shop to do it) so I can finally rip out the instrument panel, this seems like a good solution to it.

    1. Re:VERY glad this came along... by snaz555 · · Score: 1

      Me too! This is totally, positively, awesome. I looked through the code and it should port super easy to any system that can provide a libusb-like host interface to the USB bus. Which isn't exactly tough. First I'm going to use it to drive a display using an Olimex LPC-E2468 running plain uCLinux just to check it out; then I plan to port it to my own (MIT license) networking RTOS. This is exactly what I have been looking for!

  6. Before you get too excited.... by mikeselectricstuff · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From a quick reading of the pdf, it looks like this is just an API to draw simple shapes on the remote display, NOT do all the clever automatic smart compression stuff that their Windows driver does to provide additional monitors. Potentially useful, but nowhere near equivalent functionality to the Windows/Mac versions.

  7. Nearly useless.. by dr.matrix · · 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/ ).

    Floe

  8. System requirements? by WarJolt · · Score: 1

    Anyone have an Idea about what are system requirements?

  9. Re:Any video devices using MJPEG or H.264? by Molochi · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
  10. Re:Any video devices using MJPEG or H.264? by Tycho · · Score: 1

    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 cost of the cable. I'm hoping for IEE1934c next year, but lets see if Intel can screw the market over with USB3 like it did with USB2.

    --
    Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
  11. Get a Chumby. by kinema · · Score: 1

    Why not get a Chumby?

    1. Re:Get a Chumby. by John+Betonschaar · · Score: 1

      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.

  12. Actually it's really useful ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ... and they already addresses all of those concerns on the first post to their mailing list.

  13. Re:Any video devices using MJPEG or H.264? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  14. Re:Any video devices using MJPEG or H.264? by Jorophose · · Score: 1

    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'm not going to spend 300$ on a Cell card that makes no mention of an OS other than "Windows XP/Vista". I'm not going to blow 1000$ on a DSP/CPU combo that is supposed to sell for sub-10$ in bulk. And it needs to be able to transcode video using FFMpeg, and occupy a PCIEx1 or PCI slot, or heck USB or FireWire.

  15. Re:Any video devices using MJPEG or H.264? by nsaspook · · Score: 1

    HD PVR-1212 http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
    http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

    --
    In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
  16. Oh very supported! by Benanov · · Score: 1

    pl-2303 is very supported. FutureDial cables for cell phones typically use them.

    1. Re:Oh very supported! by value_added · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the comments. And thanks to everyone else that replied!