Since folks seem to have so many good ideas for how to make an Android or iOS tablet come up with the Sonos controller when unlocked, how about an idea for making the device serve as a digital photo frame when locked?
Is there an easy way to have the tablet be dark when idle/locked/unplugged and show rotating photos (digital picture frame) when idle/locked/plugged in?
And if the slide show application is workable, what’s the best stand for the tablet? Amazon and Walmart seem to have a few.
And my last tablet question for the night… since we’re talking about devices that never leave the house, why aren’t there a lot of 13, 14, 15, and 17″ tablets available now? These are all standard sizes for LCD screens in laptops. How hard is it to glue a battery to the back and install Android on a little CPU?
Check out the Stump stand (http://www.stumpstore.com/). As for the photo mode, have you looked at the built-in iPad “picture frame” mode? http://ipadinsight.com/ipad-tips-tricks/ipad-basics-how-to-use-the-ipad-as-a-digital-photo-frame/
Should be built right in:
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20005137-285/how-to-use-the-ipads-picture-frame-mode/
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-use-the-picture-frame-on-your-ipad.html
Thanks, Paul. That looks like an awesome stand. Way nicer than the spidery crud they are selling on Amazon. On the other hand, there does not seem to be an easy way to get a charger threaded up in there. If used for slide show mode one would need a power source for the iPad. What’s the best stand that is also a charging cradle?
I will try what you suggest on the iPad for picture frame mode. I actually have an iPad 3 sitting in a box right now waiting to be configured.
…why aren’t there a lot of 13, 14, 15, and 17″ tablets available now?
I think power, CPU requirements (crunching more pixels) and weight go up with the square of the screen size. Battery gets bigger ‘n heavier, to the point where “portability” fails. At that point, you might as well plug it into the wall and stick a keyboard in front of it.
Well, Sony just released 20″ ‘tabletop’: http://blog.sony.com/vaiotap
Phil,
The 14″ and above tablets are probably and issue of cost. I don’t know any specific numbers but I would guess that a 14″ touchscreen is a lot more expensive to mass produce than 10″. Also the battery would likely be much larger, significantly increasing weight.
2560×1600 tablet coming from Samsung
requires 12.8 GB/s this requires a A15 type processor.
Prior to this new iPad needed 128bit memory width to
accomplish this with A5X.
In order to have retina of 2048×1536. Apple had
to manufacture LCD without any cross talk and bigger bandwith
to switch 9,437,184 LCD Transistors to control all those pixels.
Probably Apple has patent on this. Just as they had to do for MacBookPro.
They work on it for more than 5 years hiring the best GPU guys from AMD, etc
to write their own algorithms so they could transition between Nvidia and Intel
GPU with a hitch.
You should know all these intricacies as you are EE Professor.
So just image if you to have retina ppi at 13, 14, 15, 17 width.
Next year when 4K will be prevalent then there will be GPU that
can handle it.