Anyone else using Mimo / DisplayLink USB mini-monitors?

[Neil Hewitt]

Hi all.

Needing a couple of small TFT panels for upcoming parts of my project, I just picked up a couple of Nanovision Mimo USB mini-monitors from Amazon. These are 7" 16:9 touch-sensitive screens that interface to the host PC entirely over USB - no video connection or video card support required, no power brick, just a single cable. The display draws power from the USB bus. Pics on this page at Amazon.

USB performance is clearly an issue for these screens - on test on my work PC I found the picture pixellate when sending video although I then found they have a 'video mode' in the control software which seems to improve the picture at the expense of fine detail. Since I won't be using them for video or fast-moving graphics in the sim I'm not too bothered. The CPU load doesn't appear to be significant, either. It does appear that you can use the screen as a DirectX 9 surface, although given how they work I'm not sure how.

At the price (150GBP a piece) I'm not too bothered if they don't work out - I can find other uses for them - but if they do then this is an inexpensive and largely hassle-free way of adding small TFTs to a MIP or elsewhere. If you were doing, say, an A380 sim then you know how many little LCD panels that thing has on it. It'd be a video card nightmare! DisplayLink may well be the way of the future.

I wondered if anyone else had had any experience integrating these or other DisplayLink panels into a cockpit project? I don't mind being a pioneer but if I can avoid common pitfalls, so much the better.

NH

[Shawn]

I have been planning to buy a Mimo monitor to display the Reality XP Garmin 530 on. What are the chances you might test the default (or Reality XP if you have it) GPS unit on one of your monitors for me and let me know if you find any performance issues? I would be great to know it's going to work before I spend the money. Cheers

[Sweetwater]

Guys,

I did this with a different brand and have issue with it... See here: http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/show...8358#post98358

Jeff

[Neil Hewitt]

Hmm - that doesn't look promising. I didn't notice a major CPU hit running it on my work box, but then I didn't try to launch a DX game. I imagine this model and the Lilluput are basically the same hardware under the hood, so unless the drivers have really improved it may be a non-starter for the purposes you were using it for.

In my case, the PC it'll be running from won't actually be running FSX - I'm building some custom panel software - so I might not see this problem, but certainly it makes it less attractive as an extension monitor for many.

What are the chances you might test the default (or Reality XP if you have it) GPS unit on one of your monitors for me and let me know if you find any performance issues?

Happy to, but it'll be a while before I can. My system is currently not in a flyable (or even installed) state. I could potentially pop FSX on my dev PC with it attached and see if I get the same issues as Jeff. When I can get around to it I'll reply to this thread.

In a way I'm not entirely surprised - I imagine that in DX mode the driver is passing the whole screen across as a bitmap which will knock the CPU and the USB bandwidth, whereas in non-DX mode it can just pass over the GDI stream for the monitor to render. Eventually they'll probably implement DirectX in hardware on the monitor side and then that problem may go away.

Shame if so - it looked like a cool toy

NH

[Neil Hewitt]

Of course, if I'd thought to look in the LCD Monitors sub-forum first I would have picked up on the other thread. Sorry for the duplication!

NH

[ebaw]

Hi,
I bought the SPF-85H samsung 8" minimonitor a few days ago, tried it for 5 minutes, because I don't have the time now to make an extensive test.
running fs9 and used it to display the undocked CDU from 767 level d. No frame rate hit so fare. Cant say anything about FSX tgough.
ivo

[rjvcarvalho]

I use one on vertical position to control fmc units, works great for me.

[Sweetwater]

Hi ebaw and kurby,

What version of Windows are you running?

Jeff

[rjvcarvalho]

Windows XP here.

[ebaw]

XP profesional with SP3
ivo