Something that I haven’t quite solved in a day of searching: I’ve been looking for a good, cheap, portable HDMI screen.
I’m looking for such a thing for two, maybe three reasons. The first is that I’m called to the occasional computer repair task, and it’s always useful to have a functional monitor at hand for diagnostics.
The second thing is I’ve been looking into doing more portable computing, maybe off my car power supply, maybe off a luggable 12V rig. A portable monitor designed for 12V power would really be ideal.
And third is: My Raspberry Pi needs a screen to call its own! Sure, it can have its way with any random 53″ television I happen to walk past, but having a dedicated screen would definitely put it farther ahead on my time-pile.
Rumours of a $100 Chinese wonder all lead back to a not-in-stock. But hey, for $100 I could really just buy a full desktop display and lug it around.
Thus far, I’m only coming back with partials. The Pi can output in to RCA composite video, making your typical $40-ish car video screen an option. Newegg has a third-party seller listing one display for just over that, but the similarly priced Digital Prism ATSC710 looks like it has composite or component in, plus an HDTV tuner. That’s everything *but* HDMI for my checklist.
Small displays *with* HDMI are another story still. Something I didn’t know before is that there’s a market for $1000 portable displays as a DSLR accessory. I guess for the money you get something you can drop on the ground once or twice — handy, but not what I need right now.
There’s another trend I seem to have missed: a plethora of “black box” video recorders, ranging up from $50 or so, designed to look out the windshield and record a 5 or 15 minute loop, typically to an SD card. Many have HDMI out, so they’ve been popping up in my search results. It’s interesting to look at, but I don’t think I’m sold on the concept unless there was at least a rear-facing camera too.