I have this a Tiny Computer setup by my Router to run some Bots! Issue is that its a bit far away from the Nearest Display, requiring me to either get the Computer over to a Display or a Display over to it, everytime I wanna do something with it…
Since I’m waiting on my FW12 to Arrive now I was wondering if I could use it as a Display of Sorts to just Plug it in Via HDMI/DP and work with that, or is that just not Possible?
Sadly this isn’t really possible with any laptop/integrated display because the circuitry for accepting input through hdmi etc is much more complex (and thus physically bigger) than just the mainboard sending display info over edp (those thin ribbon cables). Basically, no, no without some significant hardware modifications
You could probably use a USB HDMI capture card and then a camera app or something like OBS to show the feed on your FW 12.
You can get HDMI capture cards fairly cheap these days, but some of them are $100+, at which point you’d probably be far better off just getting a cheap, portable monitor that you can hook up when needed.
There are 2 pieces of software you can use to do something like this without buying anything.
Spacedesk: Works only if your primary machine (the one that will be sending video to the FW12 to display) is running modern Windows. However it is very convenient to use and almost instantly reconnects to my stationary devices when I simply plug in my FW12 dock via USB-C (which sets up the Ethernet interfaces in between my machine and the display devices). It handles all the virtual display creation and management for you - very easy to use. Note that you are effectively forced to upgrade the software on Jan. 1 of every year. I don’t know why, I can guess they do this because they plan on introducing a proper payment model sometime in the future but for now all the important functionality is free. Just remember to upgrade every Jan 1st or your Spacedesk screens will go black and white (hardware screens will be unaffected). I use Spacedesk daily and it has served me well. No quality issues as long as you have high bandwidth connections between your primary machine and display devices.
Deskreen: open source last time I checked, but they seem to have updated their website (to make it look like a scammy AI startup???) and now it looks like it’s heading the same direction as Spacedesk but less convenient. The plus about this is that it’s cross platform, but the downside is that you have to manage creation of virtual display devices yourself. I.e. you can stream existing screenspace to other devices with Deskreen but it will not create those displays in software for you, so you have to rely on methods like BetterDisplay on Mac or some convoluted Xrandr commands on linux. I dunno if you can create fake virtual screens without diving into C++ on Windows. Also, reconnecting devices after a disconnect has way more friction than with Spacedesk. There’s a whole “allow permissions” process that just isn’t there on Spacedesk every time you reconnect.