LukiLink project turns smartphones into an HDMI monitor

[Andrew Reid]

If, like me you have ever wanted to use the OLED screen of your lovely thin and light smartphone as an HDMI monitor for your camera, you are now officially in luck.

The LukiLink will give you that long-awaited HDMI input.

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[Santiago de la Rosa]

Finally someone did it!

[Phil A]

To be honest I'm kinda surprised how short the lag between camera movement to the monitoring seems to be, I expected it to be worse (based on experiences with dedicated field monitors).

[Andrew Reid]

Maybe even better latency with the latest smartphones like Samsung S8+?

I'll see if I can test one!

[ND64]

A little simple device the whole Japan camera industry couldn't make

[mojo43]

18 minutes ago, Eric Calabros said:

A little simple device the whole Japan camera industry couldn't make

Or didn't want to make? 

[Tim Sewell]

This is great and everything, but really only in an emergency. Most smartphones don't have removable batteries, so you're left with a choice of some kind of USB powerbank (adding weight/bulk) or running your phone down in the field - where you're most likely to need a cellphone.

[samuel.cabral]

Wait a sec... Can we plug mics on the phone and record our "proxy videos"  with good sound? 

That would be awesome for cameras with no mic input! 

[Drew Allegre]

18 minutes ago, Tim Sewell said:

This is great and everything, but really only in an emergency. Most smartphones don't have removable batteries, so you're left with a choice of some kind of USB powerbank (adding weight/bulk) or running your phone down in the field - where you're most likely to need a cellphone.

Power is definitely an issue.  I could see buying a cheap used phone for this purpose (or a couple - keep one charging on a powerbank).  Still possibly a viable alternative to something like a SmallHD 502.

That said, the Oct release date seems pretty optimistic, esp for iOS.  It sounds like the iOS app is still in development, and Apple's approval process can take awhile.  Also, it sounds like the unit itself isn't even out of prototyping, so the Oct timeframe seems really short.

[AaronChicago]

Good for Frank. I can't believe it took this long for someone to create this solution. It probably wouldn't be great for a focus/framing live monitor, but you could daisy chain this out of another monitor and use an iPad as a reference/directors monitor.

[cantsin]

Power will be the issue because the USB port will be blocked by the adapter and therefore not available for charging. On top of that, only top-of-the-line Android phones support video over USB.

[Andrew Reid]

1 hour ago, Tim Sewell said:

This is great and everything, but really only in an emergency. Most smartphones don't have removable batteries, so you're left with a choice of some kind of USB powerbank (adding weight/bulk) or running your phone down in the field - where you're most likely to need a cellphone.

It would be interesting to see how long the phone lasts with the app open, screen on and phone turned to airplane mode... but if it's 3 or 4 hours then you have a charging break for 30 minutes (if the phone supports Quickcharge 2.0 it can really charge very fast) that would be ok and you could buy a spare phone for $300 to use whilst the other charges... Still a saving over buying an OLED 1080p field monitor.

1 minute ago, cantsin said:

Power will be the issue because the USB port will be blocked by the adapter and therefore not available for charging. On top of that, only top-of-the-line Android phones support video over USB.

Come on... Be more positive.

[MurtlandPhoto]

I just got the SmallHD Focus, but the LukiLink really looks like it's worth checking out. I have an older Samsung Galaxy S5 that seems perfect for this: 5.1-inch 1080p HD AMOLED screen and interchangeable batteries

[Andrew Reid]

If the S5 supports USB video then the removable batteries will be a bonus.

What's the most modern smartphone with removable back?

Samsung Note 5?

EDIT: ah nope.. Note 4. Still a very big OLED though but will it do USB video input?

[Dose Silveri]

Oh I'll definitely have to pick one of these up after seeing the live stream option. I never buy a phone without interchangeable batteries so this will work nicely

[Parker]

1 hour ago, cantsin said:

Power will be the issue because the USB port will be blocked by the adapter and therefore not available for charging. On top of that, only top-of-the-line Android phones support video over USB.

It wouldn't be too bad to jerry rig a wireless charger to the back of the phone, connected to a power bank, if your phone supports that kind of technology (which mine does!  ) 

[Inazuma]

53 minutes ago, Parker said:

It wouldn't be too bad to jerry rig a wireless charger to the back of the phone, connected to a power bank, if your phone supports that kind of technology (which mine does!  ) 

That's a great idea!!

 

Thanks for the link Andrew. I was thinking about buying a SmallHD Focus but this might be a good budget alternative.

[Oliver Daniel]

I saw an article on this recently. 

Seems like an obvious idea, however i'd be concerned about the battery life on the phone. I know this too well when using the Osmo, which literally kills your phone in minutes. (I strapped a USB power bank to the back of it). 

 

[Andrew Reid]

Would be good if one of the camera manufacturers put a power output on their camera battery grip for an external screen, which we could then place anywhere on the rig without worrying about power, extra batteries, cabling and all bulk.

[no_connection]

Looks like a simple hdmi to usb encoder with some software on top of it that change the h264 hardware encoding settings. Latency looks to be 300ms or so, don't see any numbers of it. Would be trivial to measure so the omission of it does raise some concern.

Wifi link would not really add much latency or problems if implemented right, but then you'd have to certify it and that would be a pain I imagine.

With that kind of distance a 5GHz link would be capable of 150Mbit with little issue, as long as the phone plays nice that is.