Plugable

Google Summer of Code – USB Multiseat

Posted on 06. Apr, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in UD-160-A

Plugable is offering mentoring and donated hardware for USB graphics projects that are funded as part of Google Summer of Code 2010. Plugable is working through X.Org as a sponsoring organization.

The main focus is USB multiseat, and the details are on the xorg wiki for SoC 2010

With all the pieces that are just coming together now, there is a potential here to do a project with huge impact, without a massive amount of engineering. There is already a very solid proposal coming from a student in Brazil who has previously been involved with the MDM multiseat project.

Google’s deadline for applications is now just a few days away: April 9th.

If there’s interest from other parties, we’ll get everyone talking – or there are other related proposals that we might be able to get in at the last minute. Foremost among those is conversion of the DisplayLink USB driver udlfb and matching X server from a fbdev driver to the KMS model.

Here’s the basics of the USB multiseat opportunity:

USB Multiseat Refinement

Linux Multiseat setups have potential to significantly reduce the cost of computing, but can be hard to configure. Some progress has been made on USB multiseat, where all components of the “terminal’ (display, keyboard, mouse, and more) are on USB, so configuration can be fully plug and play – you can just assume that all devices on the same USB hub constitute a terminal.

Some early prototypes of this are working (see http://plugable.com/2009/11/16/setting-up-usb-multiseat-with-displaylink-on-linux-gdm-up-to-2-20/). The underlying kernel drivers and X servers are largely in place.

But recent changes to the X Server, ConsoleKit, and other components open the possibility for a cleaner implementation.

This SoC project would constitute the refinement/creation of configuration scripts to enable a standard Linux or *nix computer to automatically launch additional seats when a USB terminal is plugged in

* udev rules to detect hubs/devices which should be collectively treated as terminals
* udev attributes to label the set of devices with a common seat id
* udev triggers for on-demand generation of the appropriate Xorg config files, to allow seats to coexist with the primary display/devices.
* ConsoleKit scripts to launch independent GDM/X sessions for each USB terminal seat
* InputClass rules to cause the primary X session to ignore multiseat-assigned devices, and the appropriate seat to use them
* udev rules and X init scripts to grant access to audio, storage, and other devices to the person logged into the matching seat

The one-sentence goal of this project: To make USB multiseat fully plug and play for the end-user, and ready for any distro to safely and cleanly drop in at any time.

Know any aspiring software engineering students that might be interested? Check SoC info from Google and the SoC guidelines from xorg.

The Gadgeteer Reviews Our Plugable UGA-2K-A

Posted on 05. Apr, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in Windows

The Gadgeteer has been doing product reviews since 1997, and they just wrote a review of the Plugable UGA-2K-A.

A couple interesting things covered:

• The usefulness of multiple monitors – once you’ve used them, it’s hard to go back to the limits of one screen.
• They show using the DVI-to-HDMI adapter included with the UGA-2K-A, to add a 42″ LCD TV as a third laptop monitor. Nice!

And they summarize the review with this:

It does exactly what it claims it’s going to do. If I had to register any kind of complaint, I’d say that this could be considered a “gateway drug”…because if I can rock three monitors, what’s to stop me from six or eight?

Exactly what we think, too. Of course, by that analogy, we’re dealers …

One quick note: the review mentions our old pricing of $72.99. Fortunately, we’ve been able to increase our volumes and lower our prices as a result, so the UGA-2K-A is now $69.95. And because this technology is most exciting when it’s not just one but several extra monitors on a single PC — we’re also offering a temporary promotion of $10 off for every two you purchase. All the details are shown on Amazon.

If you don’t have extra monitors around, something like the Acer X203H bd 20-Inch LCD Monitor at 20″ diagonal and 1650×1080 resolution, is a good mid-range companion to one of our adapters. But again, any VGA, DVI, or HDMI monitor will do.

xorg-server 1.8.0 released

Posted on 02. Apr, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in UGA-2K-A

xorg-server 1.8.0 has been released.

There will still be some bugs and issues to resolve — but this release has most of the features, specifically related to input handling and udev-based dynamic configuration, of a more solid USB multiseat solution.

In short:

• udev rules, which already can detect a grouping of USB devices that constitute a terminal, can now tell X to ignore or use particular devices more easily through udev attributes and more dynamic/independent xorg.conf.d scripts.
• udev is now the default configuration mechanism (the torch has been passed from the less flexible hal)

So the challenges to explore are now more in the area of ConsoleKit integration and whether we can use these new capabilities support not just pure-USB multiseat setups, but also a mix of seats with PCIe attached graphics, and with fully USB seats.