Thread: Using an IPaq as display & touchscreen input

Originally Posted by malloc

I was thinking of using an IPaq as a low budget screen & input
device. The trick would be to link it to the PC via USB, and run
a home made remote controlling software a la VNC. The software
on the IPaq would only have to display screenshots sent from a
small server program on the host PC, and send back touch screen
input to the host PC.
The screen resolution would only be 320x240, but this should be
enough to watch divx, display winamp etcc... and the software
could also have some sort of zoom feature, to display a portion
of the bigger PC screen and scroll it with the pad of the IPaq.

Does anyone tried something like that ? (The IPaq wouldn't have to
be a fast expensive one, just a 200Mhz with a good screen should
be enough -> ~100$ on ebay)

Ps : I'm a game developper, and I've already written various high
performance software for pocketPC, and PC, coding a small remote control software like this is quite easy, and would only take a day
or two, I'm just not sure of the frame rate it could achieve, but It
should at least be able to handle 12 to 15fps

I'm trying to do the same thing and the results have not been encouraging. I installed VNC Server on my notebook (the intended car pc), VNC Viewer on my PocketPC and linked the two using an USB cable. I also installed ActiveSync on the notebook so that I can get TCP/IP connectivity working between the two. Using VNC Viewer on the PocketPC, I could control the notebook but its a real pain in the ***. The screen updates are VERY slow - something like 8 seconds so it rules out viewing video on the notebook. Also, scaling is not supported on the standard VNC Viewer for the PocketPC, although I did manage to find a viewer that claimed to support server-side scaling, it did notwork reliably and caused my PocketPC to hang frequently.

Using a Wifi connection could have helped - the throughput of the USB connection seemed like it was no more than 115kbps. I did try using a Bluetooth connection as well but that sucked - it was even slower than the USB connection and tended to lock up the PocketPC.

If you can write a custom viewer and server that can achieve 12 fps using an USB connection, that would be really, really good !

divx takes atleast a 400 p2

I was/am planning similar. My thought is to run a web server on the mp3 pc. Serve it up to the ipaq (pocket IE) with a nice menu system image mapped or flash or something that controls the mp3 computer. Then you can download mp3's to the ipaq when you want to take it away from the vehicle.

Originally Posted by jol

divx takes atleast a 400 p2

not for handheld devices, they use lower resolutions and lower bitrates

pocket divx


of course you will need to play divx ON the IPAQ

there's software called giantdisc that does remote mp3 control from a palm device, but i havent seen any for pocketpc.

You'll have an easier time decoding DiVX on the ipaq itself versus decoding it on the host PC and sending it uncompressed to the ipaq. VNC/RDP/ICA/X11 protocols all will work fine for remote display and control of a remote computer, but with video things get vastly more complicated.

Citrix has a product they sell alongside MetaFrame to allow thin clients to do "acceptable" audio and video. It consists of a Directshow plugin that transcodes video and sends it along over ICA. There is an ICA client for CE, but I'm not sure if it can use the ICA video capability. (I think it also requires a 100mbps network so USB may not be sufficient..)