Feb 1, 2019

iPad / iPad Pro always has that very nice and high resolution screen.

Would it be nice if some one has figure out how to turn that screen into a monitor for Raspberry Pi, Apple TV, or even Xiaomi Mibox?

Well, some one in Taiwan sure did figure it out and give the final product a nice casing too.

Check out the FEBON iCapture Card.  My main purpose is to connect my Raspberry Pi to the iPad Pro as a monitor.  Then, I can make this whole setup very mobile.  It will be good for some High School student carry around and do development here and there.

https://www.febon.net/products/icapture

I even equipped my Raspberry Pi with PiJuice Battery that can last for hours.

There are 3 interface.  1) USB-3, 2) Micro-USB, and 3) HDMI.

It is easy to hook up.  And in no time, I can use iPad Pro screen as a RetroPie console machine (with Raspberry Pi running RetroPie software).

Let’s play 1943.  And the latency from keypad to the screen is quite fast.  Best of all, arcade music are able to pump to the “MediaLink Live” app on the IOS.

In order to make this work, you have to download and launch an app, called MediaLink Live.  MediaLink Live then will auto-detect the signal from the HDMI on FEBON iCapture Card and passing thru the Lightning to USB-3 adapter.

OK, let’s do some updates and then some programming on Python.  🙂

The card is quite expensive but I have searched and google the Internet, and it seems that this is one of the very few working solutions.

I tried using my iPad Mini 2 and it does not work, because the IOS version on iPad Mini 2 stopped at IOS9 where the MiniLink Live needs IOS10 to install.

So, the whole ideal is, Jay can now bring along his iPad and the Raspberry Pi and FEBON iCapture card around.  Now we just need to find a good enough portable keyboard and a mouse.

Next project, may be trying to see how to get my old Kindle to work as a E-Ink monitor.  🙂