Just know you've gotta prep the phone BEFORE the screen dies :)
First thing I do when getting a new phone is enable ADB and set up permanent trust for my PC's ADB keys so I have this trick available if/when the screen dies. PERMANENT trust - you need to disable "automatically revoke keys" on the phone or they poof.
I've had several Android phones become unusable after a drop due to screen death over the years, and this saves a LOT of hassle.
[TIL/xkcd#1053] scrcpy ("pronounced 'screen copy'") is "Display and control your Android device"
> mirrors Android devices (video and audio) connected via USB or TCP/IP and allows control using the computer's keyboard and mouse. It does not require root access or an app installed on the device. It works on Linux, Windows, and macOS
Coincidentally enough (or not) just yesterday while skimming through the Google laptop "Googlebook" announcement and thinking "Meh... none of that is new" and wondering if I could genuinely do all that with my current Linux/GrapheneOS setup I thought "Ok... maybe the Android windows is new" and I checked more scrcpy virtual display and display id which I use for mirroring Quest headsets. I thought "OK ok Google I give you that tiny feature" only to wake up this morning, nope, not even that.
I recently moved, and the infra provider of the non-profit ISP I use imposes them a two month delay to set up a new fiber line.
During this delay, I met neighbors who accepted to share their WiFi with me. They live a bit far, across the way. The best way I found to get a stable connection with decent speeds was to hang my phone at the top of a window using a salad bag, and share the phone connection to a computer via USB.
I didn't find a way to automatically enable the USB connection sharing before plugging in the USB cable (didn't look for a solution neither, admittedly), so I had to plug the cable, enable the sharing and then put the phone in the bag and adjust the position, all that making sure the cable doesn't disconnect or everything needs to be redone from the start.
I discovered far too late that my distro now has a scrcpy package, which makes enabling the sharing conveniently from the computer.
Yes, I could have tried to ask immediate neighbors instead, probably. I should get my own line this morning, as it happens.
scrcpy is fantastic. I used to write longer texts with it, and now that I can use it again, I'll probably start doing it again.
In recent version of Android, it appears one needs to unlock blindly as the screen is black at this time, I suppose for security reasons.
In the vain of redneck-network-engineering; I was lacking a wifi dongle for a server, then I realized I could plug its Ethernet directly into a macmini and set up ip forwarding; making it a strong contender for being the most expensive dongle i'll ever use.
Amazing tool, but I had to stop using it. On my Samsung phone, I gesture based navigation. And every time I use scrcpy, the navigation stops working, and I have to restart the phone to get it working again. There's a ticket open but the developer has been unable to replicate the issue. Sadly until that is fixed, it is impossible to continue using it. The inconvenience (at least for me) is too real.
Neat. I went the other way and started writing an RDP server for Android, just so that I can use _one_ client for everything. It’s been tough going, but it’s passably usable now.
Another gem to avoid using a tiny phone screen even more. Worked with my old LG V20 (Android 8.0). Perfectly smooth over USB 2.0. Reasonably smooth over Wi-Fi (adb tcpip 5555 while USB is connected, then scrcpy --tcpip=192.168.1.xxx_ wirelessly).
Just adding that I tried this on our old Mac OS 10.12 (Sierra) Mac and it also worked fine in addition to Kubuntu 22.04. I almost didn't try the Mac since it's so old I figured no way.
I had done this in the covid lockdown days as my school was going to online classes.
Droidcam and wo-mic are some good options in this space. Droidcam if you need both a webcam and mic. Wo-mic used to work on lower android versions.
I remember plugging Droidcam to my win 7 (1gb-ram) crt tv computer and then taking an really old mostly junk phone outside and my parents were watching the monitor. It was really awesome :p
Though after an year, I ended up buying a webcam because that unused phone used to get quite heated and was really a finnicky setup to do everyday but It was a very fun experiment that I did for quite many months.
It's been a few years since covid now and I have a mac laptop now but on my desktop I still don't have webcam, and so I also use https://obs.ninja sometimes now
So TLDR if someone really wishes to do this: Droidcam,wo-mic,(https://obs.ninja + OBS live camera option)
I think its a good way to make use of old phones that you might not be using but imo battery life and its consumption seems to be the biggest hurdle imho
For anyone on Android who has not played with scrcpy, it is truly an incredible project. It's not very often I have a mind blown experience when trying out new things, but I very much did. There are a lot of nice switches to get it to do nearly anything you'd want, so it's worth reading through the usage
I’m not familiar enough with Android, so I’m wondering if the ability to control the phone requires special permissions? I’d love to have this on iOS but I believe you can’t inject touch events for security reasons.
35 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadInb4 google somehow blocks it, because of "security" or some other bullshit.
First thing I do when getting a new phone is enable ADB and set up permanent trust for my PC's ADB keys so I have this trick available if/when the screen dies. PERMANENT trust - you need to disable "automatically revoke keys" on the phone or they poof.
I've had several Android phones become unusable after a drop due to screen death over the years, and this saves a LOT of hassle.
> A virtual display can now be made flex using --flex-display (or -x), meaning it can be resized dynamically along with the client window.
Amazing.
> mirrors Android devices (video and audio) connected via USB or TCP/IP and allows control using the computer's keyboard and mouse. It does not require root access or an app installed on the device. It works on Linux, Windows, and macOS
During this delay, I met neighbors who accepted to share their WiFi with me. They live a bit far, across the way. The best way I found to get a stable connection with decent speeds was to hang my phone at the top of a window using a salad bag, and share the phone connection to a computer via USB.
I didn't find a way to automatically enable the USB connection sharing before plugging in the USB cable (didn't look for a solution neither, admittedly), so I had to plug the cable, enable the sharing and then put the phone in the bag and adjust the position, all that making sure the cable doesn't disconnect or everything needs to be redone from the start.
I discovered far too late that my distro now has a scrcpy package, which makes enabling the sharing conveniently from the computer.
Yes, I could have tried to ask immediate neighbors instead, probably. I should get my own line this morning, as it happens.
scrcpy is fantastic. I used to write longer texts with it, and now that I can use it again, I'll probably start doing it again.
In recent version of Android, it appears one needs to unlock blindly as the screen is black at this time, I suppose for security reasons.
iOS screen sharing isn’t available in the EU. Thanks Apple.
Scrcpy was a very hot contender, but I never got it to work well enough with low enough latency.
If you feel you should try this, just buy an audio interface and a cheap XLR mic.
Droidcam and wo-mic are some good options in this space. Droidcam if you need both a webcam and mic. Wo-mic used to work on lower android versions.
I remember plugging Droidcam to my win 7 (1gb-ram) crt tv computer and then taking an really old mostly junk phone outside and my parents were watching the monitor. It was really awesome :p
Though after an year, I ended up buying a webcam because that unused phone used to get quite heated and was really a finnicky setup to do everyday but It was a very fun experiment that I did for quite many months.
It's been a few years since covid now and I have a mac laptop now but on my desktop I still don't have webcam, and so I also use https://obs.ninja sometimes now
So TLDR if someone really wishes to do this: Droidcam,wo-mic,(https://obs.ninja + OBS live camera option)
I think its a good way to make use of old phones that you might not be using but imo battery life and its consumption seems to be the biggest hurdle imho