Onyx Boox Max Carta as monitor for Android phone?

[Kumabjorn]

Summer and beautiful sunshine. Time to see if I can take my work outdoors. The most portable solution would be running Word on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, a small portable Bluetooth keyboard and the Max Carta.

I have been googling but always comes up with solution for PC and Macs not Android to Android. I've been trying different VCN solutions but I guess it is too technical for my dizzy brain. Has anyone accomplished something like this? If so, is there a step by step manual available?

[franzli]

I've been thinking about something like that for a while, but never found the time and energy to dig into it deep enough to make it energy effective.

Depends on what you want to run, my goal would be to run a Linux chroot and there is one way that should be fairly straightforward. Using Linux deploy to start the Linux chroot with VNC as the output for the GUI, you should be able to access that vnc session in the regular way via a VNC client (eg bVNC) on the onyx device. Regular way means you need to be on the same network, either in some external network or your phone can form an ad-hoc access point. The only thing you should need are the IP address of your Note 3 (should also show up in Linux deploy) and the vnc access data you configure in Linux deploy.

Of course, this can be a battery drain. So what I think might be more interesting would be to try and form a network either via USB or via Bluetooth. I haven't been able to figure out yet if you can use the same approach to a USB network as I would for a regular pc in this case, i.e. if the phone can act as the USB host for another android device (maybe mdp had some insights there?).
Regarding Bluetooth, I also hit a brick wall when I wanted to try this a year ago or so, but again mdp seems to have found a way of building up a usable Bluetooth connection with IP addresses, so that could be a good alternative to using WiFi-assuming it uses a bit less power.

Of course, all this just gets a Linux desktop to your onyx device (which I think is preferable for serious work anyway), not sure how you'd do this if you want to use android apps.

[Kumabjorn]

I know it is possible to create Bluetooth networks, but I have always feared them to be too slow. The Linux chroot thing you mention literally went five feet over my head. I have been trying with TeamViewer, actually this is being typed in my Windows PC connected to my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 using TeamViewer just to see if it is possible to get it to work. But every time I try something like that on my OBMC it just reports that remote screen viewing isn't available. It is as if Onyx purposely disabled that option.

[mdp]

@Kumabjorn: sorry, but why do you want to view Android over Android?
If you run Word (I do not know as I use other systems) on the Max Carta, where is the problem? Have you actually seen it as slow?

Important: depending on the Onyx firmware matched with the Onyx device (e.g. 1.23 on Boox Abc), office automation software (for me, Kingsoft) can work from perfectly to crawlingly laggy. It is not the processor speed: if you use simpler software, typing is fast. This should really, really be solved.

BTW: BlueTooth v3+ is very fast (it uses a "WiFi" connection to do the heavier side of the data exchanges).

[mdp]

Originally Posted by franzli

if the phone can act as the USB host for another android device (maybe mdp had some insights there?).

I would try to enable "BT tethering" on one of the two devices (the phone, because Onyx firmware 1.8.2 does not have it). One can then get the addresses, if needed to configure a remote desktop client, through netcfg command on a terminal.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by mdp

@Kumabjorn: sorry, but why do you want to view Android over Android?
If you run Word (I do not know as I use other systems) on the Max Carta, where is the problem? Have you actually seen it as slow?

I realize that may sound confusing. The problem with Onyx Boox Max Carta is the Android version it is running, 4.0.2 and Word as well as Microsoft's other Office apps require 4.4 in order to run. Hence, running those from my phone, but displaying on e-ink would make for a very portable outdoor computing office.