How to get laptop display transferred as data to another laptop?

March 23, 2011 5:07 AM

How to get laptop display transferred as data to another laptop?

Hi,
Is there a way to get my laptop's screen pixel data transferred automatically (via vga or hdmi or usb or something like that) to another laptop but have that data manipulatable?

for example, it can be like some kind of wired remote login setup.

I want to be able to use a program to do computations on the data, yet not manually transfer the pixel data myself using a program over ethernet since it's redundant and slow.

Thanks!

posted by bboylawson to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: If you had an HDMI/VGA video capture card on the receiving laptop, that could work. You'd leave the keyboard and mouse plugged into the sending laptop, though, so maybe that isn't what you want.

However, what you seem to be describing is really a remote desktop kind of application. And these are invariably done over a networking protocol.
posted by Netzapper at 6:07 AM on March 23, 2011

So you essentially want another computer to capture screenshots on your laptop? If not, I'm not exactly clear what you mean by "pixel data".

You can set up a script on your laptop to periodically grab a screenshot, save it to a folder, and copy the screenshot to another computer over some protocol; network would likely be easiest-- direct-wired Ethernet or a wireless ad-hoc network (or a normal network if that's an option). I can think of a few ways to do that on a Mac (making use of Automator and Folder Actions, or even bash scripting, which would work on Linux too), but others will have to provide guidance for PC.
posted by supercres at 6:40 AM on March 23, 2011

Response by poster: I think the video capture card is what I'm looking for.

It's fine that the mouse and keyboard are connected to the sending laptop as long as another set of mouse and keyboard can still be used on the receiving laptop (it mustn't be able to control the mouse and keyboard of the sending laptop). so I guess it isn't really like remote login.

"So you essentially want another computer to capture screenshots on your laptop? If not, I'm not exactly clear what you mean by "pixel data"."

Yes, I guess. But, alot of screenshots; maybe 1 every 100 ms. The method you describe seems too slow to me.

Do you have any more information about the capture cards?
posted by bboylawson at 7:09 AM on March 23, 2011

Guessing you're working in Windows, DirectShow, I think, would be a good place to start.

I don't know what language you're using, but take a look at this API: VideoCapture for python. It uses DirectShow.

Here's a stackoverflow about DirectShow tutorials.

Here is a project on CodeProject using C# and .NET, but it's old.
posted by teabag at 7:30 AM on March 23, 2011

If you're using OS-X, Apple has a nice screen sharing app.
posted by three blind mice at 8:36 AM on March 23, 2011

Yes, I guess. But, alot of screenshots; maybe 1 every 100 ms. The method you describe seems too slow to me.

What are you doing with the pixel data once you get it? One method or another might be better depending on what you are actually doing.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:44 AM on March 23, 2011

You can set up a script on your laptop to periodically grab a screenshot, save it to a folder, and copy the screenshot to another computer over some protocol; network would likely be easiest-- direct-wired Ethernet or a wireless ad-hoc network (or a normal network if that's an option). I can think of a few ways to do that on a Mac (making use of Automator and Folder Actions, or even bash scripting, which would work on Linux too), but others will have to provide guidance for PC.

I wrote a quick python script to test this out (requires python, pil, ssft (you can run ssft directly in command line mode for the receiving machine), and only tested on Windows). Doing a localhost connection, it maxed out at around 6 images per second for my machine. Actual speed would vary based on resolution and network speeds.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2011