A Small Monitor On a Keyboard?

[whizzard]

Excuse the rather crude render, it was a quick mockup of an idea.  I have a tiny screen on my desk and it is handy for keeping track of things that you like to glance at from time to time like a webpage, graph, or infographic, whatever.  Am I the only one who would think a keyboard with a little monitor on it would be fun?  You could even run the HDMI cable along with the USB cable to the PC.  Basically set it up as a 2nd, 3rd, 4th monitor or whatever and put anything you like on it!  Here is a quick mockup of the basic idea I am talking about.

[MIGHTY CHICKEN]

I'm sure this would be a fun thing, we already have oleds so I'd think we can take another step. We've had the saturn60 which had a raspberry pi tucked in so I'm sure someone could glue a small screen onto that

[Leslieann]

Couple things,
If you put an LCD on the board you're going to need power (usb if you use a Pi model) and hdmi, you can't just use USB, that means 3 cables, one of them very large, going to your keyboard. There are small lcd's that wire into a board but they have extremely limited function, I.E. you can't pull much if any info from the computer without writing custom drivers and adding more computing power to the keyboard. Not going to happen with just QMK and a Teensy or cheap Pro Micro. Also, depending on your OS ((I.E. Windows), you also may have to buy software (such as Aida64?) to get those values into a form you can export to a keyboard.

A screen on your board is out of your line of vision, it means looking quite a ways down to get just a small bit of info. Worse, it's fixed, sure you can make it hinged but it's always positioned based on your keyboard, or removed with your keyboard. On many games I rotate my board about 30 degrees for less wrist strain, that means the screen would be rotated 30 degrees.

You're also kind of stuck.
Burned up a screen, pray you can find a replacement that fits? Want to change something? How about wanting a new board or yours died? It's built in. You're putting all your eggs in one basket and kind of limiting your upgrade path. Keep your keyboard just a  keyboard, it leaves you free to change your keyboard all you want without being stuck. In the end I put mine in a dock attached to my monitor shelf. I also added a USB dock, remote power switch and later a screw tray...  It's up higher (easier to see), I can relocate it, no thick cables and when I got bored of it I could remove it and not effect my keyboard.


Also there's problems...
Most of these little Pi screens don't go into a true sleep mode if they have power, they go into super bright blue. So every time the computer goes into sleep or standby your screen goes into hyper blue mode. Some boards will let you turn USB on and off, so will some hubs, but not all, and it means an extra step if it's a manual switch.

Some GPUs freak out with more than 2 screens, particularly Intel. I have dual screens and then I had a tiny third mounted in a dock, when using onboard gpu NONE of the screens worked during boot until the OS loaded drivers. No amount of bios tweaking would fix it. This is because some ports on Intel are shared, I.E. you may have 3 ports; 2 Displayport (DP), 1 HDMI but one DP and the HDMI are shared so only one can be used at boot. My system also had a USB C port and if I used a type-c to HDMI but when doing this the small screen only worked once booted, but at least I could see my boot info. Using a gaming GPU eliminates this issue, but you still have the power issue.


Basically, you can get more functionality and longer life out of a hub with a screen, than a keyboard with a screen.
Like I said, I added a screw tray (with usb stick and SD storage) to my hub later, I wouldn't want that on my keyboard, same with power button or a USB hub, but it all works great as a dock and it never interferes with my keyboard.


Pics of mine:

[whizzard]

You make some solid points...  and a monster post!!

I was just spitballin and wondering if anyone had ever tried this.  I have a tiny novelty monitor 3x2.5 inch screen and I am surprised at how often I check it because I keep a graph I keep an eye on displayed on it.  It runs off USB-C power. 

I completely forgot about the extra power that would be required, and the keyboard would need a pretty heavily engineered pcb. 

I never said it was practical at ALL but lots of projects aren't... it would be more the fun / snazzy factor.  I don't see it being used for "mission critical" displays or to game on or anything.  The tiny OLED strip displays on some keyboards are really not very useful or necessary but people still find them fun and interesting visually.

As far as GPUs I run 4 monitors including the novelty size screen no probs on Windows and Linux... you do need a decent modern GPU to do this, but multi-monitor is not as bad as it used to be at all... and I am sure many people aren't using all the display / HDMI ports on their high-end graphics cards.  Most people who buy custom keyboards can figure out how to configure a multi-monitor setup.

I just think it is a fun idea that I have not seen tried... (probably for the reasons you laid out).  But it is fun to lighten up sometimes and throw ideas around.  Its almost like a gauge cluster in your car.. you don't really stare at it but you glance at it from time to time for quick information.  I dunno.

[Leslieann]

As far as GPUs I run 4 monitors including the novelty size screen no probs on Windows and Linux... you do need a decent modern GPU to do this, but multi-monitor is not as bad as it used to be at all... and I am sure many people aren't using all the display / HDMI ports on their high-end graphics cards.  Most people who buy custom keyboards can figure out how to configure a multi-monitor setup.

Thanks.

I went down your same path, it's how I ended up with that printed keyboard and the dock you see in the pics, I was hoping to do more with the tiny lcd but it just wasn't capable. Personally, I've found my dock needs changed far more often than my keyboard because while keyboards rarely change everything else does. In my docks I've had volume knobs, power switches for multiple systems, sdcard readers, router reset switch, ESATA ports, one even had a bios reset for overclocking, the next revision will have type C and a network port... I couldn't make those changes or integrate so much if it had been built into and limited by the shape of the board. Build a dock with all you need or want it will make you much happier and allow for much more flexibility. Laser cut, hand cut, 3d printed, make it however you can, your hands are not on it as much so how it's made and made of is less important than what it does compared to a keyboard where it's all touchy feely, it also means a lot less trial and error (and expense/regrets) trying to get it right or later deciding it was just not as good as you'd hoped.


The GPU doesn't need to be high end just enough ports, ports that are not just an alternate connector.
A GPU may have multiple DisplayPort and HDMI but they may be paired, i.e one HDMI is just an alternate connector for the DisplayPort output (DP is backwards compatible with multiple connectors). I've seen a 1060 that was this way, it had dual DisplayPort and dual HDMI for VR, but the second HDMI was tied to the second DisplayPort, you could only have one DP and 2 HDMI or two DP and one HDMI. There was no way to do 4 screens. This is the same problem my mobo had, the HDMI was paired to the second DisplayPort. It's fixable if you know the issue, but like me at the time, most assume a port is a port, you plug a screen in, screen works.

By the way, some of those screens handle resolution oddly and how it displays info may or may not work well depending OS and monitoring software used. I have 3, one like yours, the one you see and one larger one. The large and small ones have a set resolution so if widgets look bad there's only so much I can do to compensate, the littlest one you can't see the cursor to adjust the widgets but because the resolution is better it makes the widgets and text look better. The middle one lets me set resolution which gives me a way to better tune the looks of it but because it was meant to be used as a touch screen it has the worst display quality of the bunch and it's also the thickest, I had to desolder a bunch of junk related to power and the Pi connection to make it slim enough for my purpose. I still wasn't happy with the size of it.