How To:

Make a Windows Vista/Longhorn-Style Auxiliary Display

by Phillip Torrone
November 21, 2005

Editor's note: This How-to was originally posted in the MAKE blog.

Earlier this year, Microsoft and hardware manufacturer ASUS showed a new technology that might be baked in to future laptops: a small LCD on the outside of a laptop that displays email, battery, CPU, wi-fi signal, and all sorts of things. The Flipstart PC will have the same kind of display. I like the idea of these auxiliary displays, but you don't have to wait until the release of Windows Vista OS (formerly Longhorn) next year to have one. This article shows how to make your own laptop auxiliary display. It describes a great and cheap way to mount an LCD onto a PC case, and how to use Konfabulator (which is now free) to build a versatile interface "widget" that runs on the display.

You can see a video of this auxiliary screen in action here and select "Make an Auxiliary Display." This is MAKE's iTunes feed, and it contains this video and a lot of other cool things. (Or, just watch the video here).

Auxiliary Displays: Descriptions and Rumors

What is an auxiliary display? Here's a description from a Microsoft press release on the subject: Auxiliary displays. An ASUS-designed auxiliary display concept for mobile and desktop PCs and peripheral devices, such as cell phones, remote controls, keyboards and watches, offers immediate access to calendars, recent e-mail, digital media and other data. It would also offer updates on the status of the PC while the machine is turned off or the lid of a mobile PC is closed. Also read the PCWorld story.

Here are a few photos of auxiliary displays from the Microsoft press center:

Photos via Only4Gurus.com, Seattle PI blog, and the SuperSite for Windows.

The ASUS laptop looks really interesting; it has a big hump on it for the display.

Microsoft also posted a complete PowerPoint that goes into detail about how the auxiliary display will work under Longhorn; download it here.

The upcoming Flipstart PC seems like it will also have this idea built into it when it comes out. There have been rumors that Microsoft might use the SPOT wristwatch technology for auxiliary display functions as well, which could be interesting.

My little prediction is that the next generation of Mac iBooks/PowerBooks will also have something like this. The display may be housed on a combination music player/removable drive that functions as the touch pad when docked in the notebook. The reason I mention this is because of a patent described here and in this drawing:

It seems to me you could do something like this by using the iPod screen. Anyhow...back to the how-to!

Make Your Own Auxiliary Display

I was tired of waiting for Vista/Longhorn, Flipstarts, and whatevers, so I cooked up a lower-tech version that can actually do more. My version will not work when the computer is shut down or hibernating, but it looks really cool--and the best part is, it's built with an old Pocket PC that I wasn't really using.

In a nutshell, we're going to turn a Pocket PC into an auxilary display that's powered by the USB. All this requires is some simple software installation. To kick it up a notch, you can also do some hardware modding, to gracefully attach the display to the outside of your computer. I used a laptop, but PC modders could easily do the same thing with a tower-style PC.

Ingredients:

• Windows XP PC
• Pocket PC device (with USB cable and/or wi-fi)
• ActiveSync 4.8
• Innobec SideWindow 1.01
• Konfabulator for Windows

The Pocket PC

You can use just about any Pocket PC for this. I used an HP iPAQ h4100. It's tiny, wi-fi enabled, and Bluetooth enabled.

I have a nice collection of Pocket PCs, and I'm always using them for some project or another. I think I'll really start using them in more case mods now. These days, you can pick up Pocket PCs for $50 or less on eBay.

For this how-to, we're going to connect the laptop to the Pocket PC/auxiliary display via USB cable. This way, the auxiliary display can charge and sync at the same time. You could also sync it with wi-fi, but that would drain the Pocket PC's battery power.

Install ActiveSync

If you have a Pocket PC, you've likely already installed ActiveSync. If not, get it here. I use 4.8 because I can sync over wi-fi.

As long as your Pocket PC syncs with your PC, you'll be able to make it work as an auxiliary display. A good general how-to on syncing via wi-fi is available here. My pal Jorgen from infoSync World helped me out with this, too.

Install Innobec SideWindow

The most important application for this hack is Innobec SideWindow. Once installed on your PC, it extends your desktop onto your Pocket PC. It works by telling Windows XP, which has dual-monitor support, that it's an additional monitor. There's a free trial of SideWindow here, and it's only $14.95 to buy.

Download and install SideWindow, then bring up its options interface by double-clicking the icon in the task tray, or through Start > Programs. You'll see a control panel like this:

You can change the color depth, portrait or landscape orientation, as well as resolutions up to 768 x 1024.

Make sure your Pocket PC is plugged in via the cable/cradle/wi-fi, and then go ahead and test SideWindow. Once it's active, you should be able to see your mouse's cursor on the Pocket PC screen, and move it on and off of your PC screen.

If you're having problems, right-click the XP, choose "Properties" to view Display Properties, and go to the Settings tab. Sometimes you just need to tell Windows XP to "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" by clicking the check box and clicking Apply.

Install Konfabulator

I wanted my auxiliary display to have little icons like what Flipstart and Windows Vista will show. Konfabulator is an amazing application that lets you create thousands of onscreen "widgets" that display anything and everything. Plus, now that it's been It scooped up by Yahoo!, it's free.

Download and install Konfabulator, then browse the Widget Gallery and download the ones you'd like to see on your auxiliary display. At first, I figured I was going to code up some little display apps of my own to run, but why bother? These Konfabulator Widgets are perfect for this.

Here's the list of widgets I downloaded. Download the ones you want.

With Konfabulator installed and some widgets downloaded, double-click to run the widgets you want. They'll run on your PC's main screen, and from there, you can just drag them over to your Pocket PC's display.

Here's a screenshot of the auxiliary display I put together. It's really slick. I have wi-fi, music playing, calendar, email, disk status, memory, CPU, weather, time, battery, and even RSS feeds!

Here it is on the actual screen. Don't forget that you can operate the LCD with a finger or stylus, as well as with the keypad.

On a side note, here's the way Microsoft has shown they'll manage the auxiliary display under Longhorn/Vista.

I like simply dragging and dropping the widgets better. I adjusted the screen width to 400, which let me include a good number of widgets but still read the text. If you're mounting this to the front of a PC tower, you can also run the display in portrait mode.

Mount the Pocket PC

For a PC case mod, you could just mount the Pocket PC to the case after cutting out a hole. Here's an example of what it could look like:

Photo via Gear Live.

For my version of the auxiliary display, I just taped the Pocket PC and USB cable to the laptop with electrical tape.

It looks pretty neat and if I want, I can disable the sleep function when the lid is closed, so that the display can remain on.

I brought the laptop to a local coffee shop and a lot of people were really interested--so who knows, this might really take off one day! I might do a proper mod, but the tape job is fine and works for now. The real application here is for PC case modders of course, but this was fun.

A while back, we had a story about adding a PSOne LCD screen to a PC. From now on, anytime anyone wants a small second display for a PC, a Pocket PC is really the easier way to go. If you hunt for deals on an old Pocket PC, you can do the entire thing for under $50, and let off-the-shelf software do all the heavy lifting for the display. Why wait for future operating systems or devices to ship when you can build it now?

Another useful thing is to mount the Pocket PC alongside your main screen, or keep it in the cradle, and use it as a second monitor to see at all times. That's how SideWindow software was intended to be used, I think...

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