Use an Android smartphone as a Raspberry Pi screen

Recycled

© Lead Image © Valery Kachaev, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © Valery Kachaev, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 221/2019
Author(s):

A simple Python program turns a disused smartphone into a wirelessly connected Raspberry Pi display.

New low-end $100 smartphones offer enough performance for everyday life, but the market for used devices is dismal. Instead of letting your smartphones and tablets gather dust, you can put their touchscreens to work and provide a better display than those of the same size marketed for the Raspberry Pi.

One disadvantage is the lack of a connection cable for the output from the Raspberry Pi to the smartphone. Fortunately, you have alternatives, such as a wireless connection, which I will show you how to set up in this article.

Another problem is the display size. Although the 800x480-pixel resolution of a smartphone, for example, is close to that of the official Pi display, the screen area is extremely small; a normal desktop simply cannot be displayed on devices smaller than a 10-inch tablet.

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