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Thread: HDMI over wi-fi?

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    Default HDMI over wi-fi?

    I'm pretty sure this wouldn't work, but I've been asked by a customer about sending a HDMI signal to a remote monitor. He's suggested that using HDMI-to-ethernet converters and wi-fi extenders would do the job.

    His idea:
    laptop > HDMI-to-ethernet > wi-fi AP with extender > wi-fi receiver > ethernet-to-HDMI > monitor

    My first idea:
    laptop > HDMI-to-ethernet > cat5 cable> ethernet-to-HDMI > monitor

    The issue with using a cable is the distance - it could exceed 100m, and that would need an amplifier/repeater - which is problematic for other reasons.

    My second idea is to have the source laptop running as a streaming server, connected via point-to-point wi-fi to another laptop (or Raspberry Pi) running VLC, then output to a monitor.

    The whole situation is a bit more complicated, but this part is where I need advice.



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    Default

    There are wireless HDMI senders/receivers available.

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    "There are wireless HDMI senders/receivers available."

    So I've discovered since yesterday!

    It's for a dirt bike race track, to echo the lap timing and race results from the main building to remote monitors for the spectators to see. Maybe get some sponsor slides on the monitors, too - to earn a bit of money.

    One monitor is approx 40-50 m from main building so it's stretching the abilities of the AV sender/receiver packages I've found so far, but the other is more like 100 m away.

    I played around with VLC on one laptop in desktop capture mode as a streaming server, and VLC client on another laptop over the home wi-fi, and it worked, sort of. Trying to go higher than 15fps was pushing things, but that frame rate is OK for a race results table.

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    Well - I found a transceiver set that claimed to go up to 100m, but it didn't. It covered the shorter distance - sometimes. It worked when I tested it at the track, but not on race day even after multiple power-cycling and hard resets , then it worked again when I got it home......

    Going back a few days, the product advertised was not the product I received. The ad said "2.4/5GHz", but the web interface has a drop-down that only allows selection of 5GHz, it took many minutes to establish a connection the first time and needed a reset to connect at all. It's supposed to broadcast a SSID "HDMI-Extender" but only does so for about 10 seconds at a time, until you connect with a phone or laptop, then that SSID stays up. Literally, you could watch it appear and disappear using a wi-fi analyzer app on the phone. I rang the supplier to query WTF, and he talked me through what I'd already done, only it connected that time. He thought it was peculiar that the manual said 2.4/5GHz but the product didn't allow 2.4GHz, but if it worked at 5GHz, then all was OK.

    I'm going to return them and look further.

    I got the long-distance one working with VLC streaming over wi-fi from one laptop to another one It lagged by approx 10 seconds, but the announcer told me that was OK for his purposes.

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    depending on how the power is setup in the power box you could use the hdmi over
    power units. If the caller box and monitor use a common circuit or not.


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    A couple of options - some of which I've used for similar setups. I can almost guarantee you won't have success over those distances with any consumer level WiFi, especially if it involves an "extender". Look into Ubiquiti or Engenius products, they offer high power WiFi access points - I've used/configured both and they are great, with Engenius a little easier for the first-time user to set up.

    Consider one of these, ENH-500, that uses a directional/sector antenna to achieve longer distances,

    If your timing/scoring software provides an HTML page to show data, consider using smart TVs to connect to your WiFi network and then use the web browser on each one to navigate to the timing software URL. That will require a lot less bandwidth than streaming video over WiFi.

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