The Android Transporter allows you to share display content wirelessly with other screens in real time.
The Android Transporter beams the display contents of your smartphone or tablet onto other gadgets, TVs, video projectors, and car infotainment systems. Our prototype shows that this is possible even with the old Google Nexus S.
To implement this efficiently we had to deeply integrate our technology into the Android platform by utilizing hardware accelerated H.264 encoders and decoders.
The Android Transporter implements the display sharing by combining a set of standardized technologies.
The Wi-Fi Alliance® is currently forming a standard called Miracast™ that promises to deliver the same functionality.
We aim to make the Android Transporter fully compliant with the Miracast™ specs as soon as they are available.
The following features will arrive soon:
- Dual screen support with accompanying SDK.
- WiFi Direct support.
- Further improvements to the user experience by reducing the latency.
- We plan to open-source our patches for the Android platform.
Stay tuned!
54 Comments
Any news on a release?
We alreay released the Android Transporter tech demo in october. Just take a look at this blog post: http://esrlabs.com/android-transporter-for-the-nexus-7-and-the-raspberry-pi
This is a very nice masterpiece.
When do you plan to release open-source?
In the first week of October we plan to release to first public beta. This will contain parts of the code (mostly the player side).
Hi, I`ve been reading about this project and seems awesome, I would like to ask you if its possible to run it on a mini android pc like like the MK802. Thanks in advance for your help.
I do not know the tech specs of the MK802 but I am pretty sure that it would be possible to run the Android Transporter. Currently we finalize our first public beta. Maybe someone here has time to investigate this after the release.
u guys are awesome!! plz release it soon!!
This is an amazing project! How long did it take to reach the current stage?
Looks like an interesting project. I haven’t played with Raspberry Pi yet…I do see that being a good possibility. Is there going to be any attempt to support some of the Android on a USB stick retail products coming out (or Ouya maybe?)
We also thought of supporting Android USB sticks. But we have not investigated that up till now.
Are the streams encrypted? I’d like to use this as a wireless link to a monitor, but not I’ll need to stick with wires if the stream can be intercepted.
Currently the streams are WPA2 encrypted by the WiFi connection. But we also plan to add SRTP support.
Hi there,
This looks like a great piece of software!
Do you have a release date?
Not yet. But we are currently working on the Raspberry Pi player for the Android Transporter. It will be released soon.
i’m a slightly less of a techie person so bear with me if the q is slightly not up to the mark. In case of an android device like nexus 7 a firm ware upgrade is reqd and a powerful device is reqd. What is expected out of the rasberry pi, is it powerful enough to do the mirroring long enough for extended durations?
Does mirroring or streaming of content stored on my android device via wifi to the tv consume my data. Somebody told me for streaming like this you don’t need data usage they must just be on the same networ, thus if they are on the same wifi netwoek, that means they will stream the data btwn the devices using the wi fi router but no data is used.thank u 4 ur help!
Yes, the Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to do mirroring for long durations. This is because the Raspberry Pi has a hardware H.264 encoder which keeps the CPU idle during displaying the video.
The streaming is done over WiFi. Either using your WiFi router, a WiFi hotspot that is set up on the gadget or the Raspberry Pi or using WiFi Direct.
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Any plans on of developing this tool for any other Android devices ?
Like Samsung EPIC 4g ?
Currently we focus on the Google Nexus devices. But there is no reason why not to extend the support to other devices.
and what about HTC Desire C?
Sorry, but currently we don’t have a HTC Desire device to test it.
Hi,
I was wondering if a Android 4.x based tablet would be able to run this app. If yes then I would able to stream content -> Raspberry Pi. -> my HD-LCD. At what resolution would I be able to watch it on my TV ? Is the tablet a limiting factor ?
Now I’m using an iPod Touch which drives an Apple TV2nd gen. Would I be able to do the same with Android Transporter ?
Love to hear from you soon.
Henk Schoneveld
In principle every Android 4.x device should be able to run the Android Transporter. But you have to patch the firmware to make it work. Currently we stream with the same resolution that the handset uses. But in future with the introduction of the dual screen mode we are also able to stream in different and also higher resolutions.
First things first… good job!
Now… Hello
Any thoughts on cross platform implementations or it depends on the hardware?
The Android Transporter relies on H.264 hardware encoders and/or decoders. So currently we can run it on Android 4.x and on the Raspberry Pi.
Have you considered looking at the newly-renamed Firefox OS (Boot2Gecko) ? It will be supporting h.264 decoding (at least) via the HTML5 video tag.
No, not yet.
Given you are planning to release the source code, does this mean that Android 5, or a similar future version, might eventually make this available without a firmware patch?
That’s up to Google
Hello,
waht a fantastic idea!
Do you plan an android App to use Transporter on different phones without Firmware patching?
What are the Minimum Hardware Required to run Transporter on a mobile Phone?
Sorry, but the Android Transporter requires firmware patching. The Android platform adjustments that are needed are not doable with just the SDK.
The hardware has to provide a H.264 encoder and/or decoder.
Awesome project. Just wondering how did you get the drivers for hardware accelerated h264 encoding? Did you use something proprietary?
Yes, we use the hardware accelerated H.264 encoders and decoders that are provided by the vendor.
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I am a little confused. Does Android transporter means Wi-Fi Display on Android? or it is different, but can be compatible with Wi-Fi Display.
The Android Transporter implements wireless display sharing by combining a set of standardized technologies. Since the Miracast (formerly known as WiFi Display) spec is not yet final the Android Transporter is not a certified Miracast product. But we aim to fully comply with the Miracast specs once they are final.
This is so awesome that you’ve been able to implement this on existing devices. I’m looking forward to seeing how this project progresses! This should be built into AOSP so all Android phones have it, here’s hoping Google takes note of what you’re doing here.
Essays like this are so important to bradoneing people’s horizons.
That’s celared my thoughts. Thanks for contributing.
What is the status of WiFi Display compatibility (with other manufacturers such as Samsung, Intel, Belkin, D-Link, Netgear, .). It would be fantastic as an example to have the functionality of ‘Samsung AllShare Cast’ without needing to get all new products from them!
The Wi-Fi Alliance has now renamed the WiFi Display technology to Miracast.
I do not know what Samsung and HTC are currently implementing but I think it is similar to Miracast. Hopefully all vendors will comply with the Miracast specs when they are available later in 2012.
Great app, timing will be critical for its release date as intel are claiming this as an exclusive feature;
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/07/31/introducing-wireless-display-technology-on-ia-phones#comment-1641598
If this piece is correct existing recievers will work with Miracast;
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5957/netgear-introduces-neotv-pro-ntv200s-widi-and-media-streamer-combo
And S3 and optimus g;
http://www.autoomobile.com/news/samsung-galaxy-s3-lg-optimus-g-miracast/1003391/
Your product appears to be (as far as I know) unique as it will may bring miracast, Wifi direct and network supported standards together.
Could this also stream to Xbmc or similar??
Great post,thanks,That is what I really want to know.
It was a awe-inspiring post and it has a significant meaning and thanks for sharing the information.Would love to read your next post too……
Cool! I really want this to become available to everyone but do you need nfc to make this work?
Currently we use NFC to set up the mirror mode. But there also is a manual mode that does not require NFC. Maybe we can add Zeroconf service discovery to partially automate the setup when there is no NFC.
Very ammazing!
i’ve cyanogenmod powered galaxy nexus, and i will be very happy of test this on it!
This is great! I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.
The possibilities are pretty much unlimited. Effectively turn a mobile phone and a TV or small display into a pretty good desktop.
Have you got any idea when you will be releasing this? I assume it will have to be baked into a ROM?
Yes, the Android Transporter requires a full firmware update since we have done adjustments to the whole Android platform. Currently I cannot give you a release date, but we are already in discussions with some well-known replacement firmware distributors and mobile development communities.
Hello,
Is there a possibility of this being a root application? As in a rooted user can grant the application root access and the application can write whatever changes are necessary to the system.
Sorry, no. We touched a lot of internal Android components to build the Android Transporter. You have to wait until we release it.
Will you release the entire source code or just a ROM? I don’t want to miss features of the AOKP ROM for my Nexus S and releasing the source would be good for merging it with the source fof popular ROMs.
We plan to release the source code to enable other custom ROMs to include it.
This is so awesome. I can’t wait to see what the ROM devs can do with this. Very cool on your part to let ROM devs have access to this (once finished, of course!).
Thank you!!!
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