Meta Portal Given New Life As Extended Display

September 18, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 5 Comments

The Meta Portal and associated devices are effectively defunct, having been abandoned by the company in 2022. If you’ve still got one at home, you might be wondering what to do with it. That’s where Wormhole Display from [pgodlews] comes in handy.

The thing about the Meta Portal, and much of the rest of the related lineup, is that they were effectively just heavily branded Android tablets. The screens and speakers were good, and the basic functionality was all there — albeit locked down somewhat to prevent users from easily repurposing them at will. However, it’s possible to enable Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and turn the device to doing your own bidding.

To that end, [pgodlews] built Wormhole Display as an APK that can be dropped on to the Meta Portal to make it an extendable display for Apple devices. It shows up via AirPlay, letting you use it as a wireless display for your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. You can do screen mirroring or use it as an extended display, as desired, including use of the Portal’s speakers if needed. Under the hood, it’s an Android port of UxPlay, a Unix AirPlay server which uses Android’s MediaCodec and AudioTrack in place of GStreamer to take advantage of the Meta Portal’s onboard H.264 decoder.

Extended displays can be incredibly useful, so if you’ve got an old Meta Portal laying around, consider putting it back to work. We’ve seen it done with e-readers, too. If you’ve got your own hacks to repurpose old, forgotten hardware, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tipsline!

Ask Hackaday: Do You Need A Tablet?

April 29, 2026 by Al Williams 93 Comments

There’s an old saying that the happiest days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat, and the day they sell it. For me, the happiest days of an Android tablet owner’s life are the day they buy a new one, and the day they buy a newer one. For some reason, I always buy tablets with great expectations, get them set up, and then promptly lose them in a pile on my desk, not to be seen again. Then a shiny new tablet gets my attention in a year or so, and the cycle repeats.

You might be thinking that I just buy cheap junk tablets. It is true that I have. But I have also bought new Galaxy and Asus tablets with the same result. Admittedly, I have owned several Surface Laptops and Pros, and I do use them. But I can’t remember the last time I have used one without the keyboard. They aren’t really tablets — they are just laptops that can also be heavy, awkward tablets.

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An Open Source Electromagnetic Resonance Tablet

January 14, 2026 by Fenix Guthrie 23 Comments

Drawing tablets have been a favorite computer peripheral of artists since its inception in the 1980s. If you have ever used a drawing tablet of this nature, you may have wondered, how it works, and if you can make one. Well, wonder no longer as [Yukidama] has demonstrated an open source electromagnetic resonance (EMR) drawing tablet build!

The principle of simple EMR tablets is quite straight forward. A coil in the tablet oscillates from around 400 kHz to 600 kHz. This induces a current inside a coil within the pen at its resonant frequency. This in turn, results in a voltage spike within the tablet around the pen’s resonant frequency. For pressure sensing, a simple circuit within the pen can shift its resonant frequency, which likewise is picked up within the tablet. The tablet’s input buttons work in similar ways!

But this is merely one dimensional. To sample two dimensions, two arrays of coils are needed. One to sample the horizontal axis, and one the vertical. The driver circuit simply sweeps over the array and samples every coil at any arbitrary speed the driver can achieve.

Finally, [Yukidama] made a last demo by refining the driver board, designed to drive a flexible circuit containing the coils. This then sits behind the screen of a Panasonic RZ series laptop, turning the device into a rather effective drawing tablet!

If tablets aren’t your style, check out this drawing pen.

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Tablet Suspension System Avoids Fatigue At Bedtime

May 3, 2025 by Seth Mabbott 12 Comments

You know how it is. You’re all cozy in bed but not quite ready to doze off. You’re reading Hackaday (Hackaday is your go-to bedtime reading material, right?) or you’re binge-watching your latest reality TV obsession on your tablet. You feel the tablet growing heavier and heavier as your arms fatigue from holding it inches above your face. You consider the embarrassment you’ll endure from explaining how you injured your nose as the danger of dropping the tablet gradually increases. The struggle is real.

[Will Dana] has been engineering his way out of this predicament for a few years now, and with the recent upgrade to his iPad suspension system he is maximizing his laziness, but not without putting in a fair amount of hard work first.

The first iteration of the device worked on a manual pulley system whereby an iPad was suspended from the ceiling over his bed on three cords. Pulling on a cord beside the bed would raise the bracket used for holding the iPad out of the way while not in use. This new iteration takes that pesky cord pulling out of the user’s hands, replacing it with a motorized winch. A spot of dark ink on one of the cords in combination with a light sensor helps to calibrate the system so that the ESP32 which controls it always knows the proper limits of operation.

Of course, if, like [Will], you’re using an ESP32, and your room is already fully controlled by a voice interface, you may as well integrate the two. After all, there is no sense in wasting precious energy by pressing buttons. Utter a simple command to Alexa once you’re tucked in, and it’s time for hands-free entertainment.

We’ve covered several of [Will]’s previous creations, such as his Motorized Relay Computer and Harry Potter-inspired Sorting Hat.

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HP WebOS TouchPad Gets With The USB-C Times

October 1, 2024 by Arya Voronova 9 Comments

Despite HP shuttering their WebOS project some time ago, the operating system has kept a dedicated following. One device in particular, the HP TouchPad, was released just a month before webOS went under and is still a favorite among hackers — giving the device the kind of love that HP never could. [Alan Morford] from the pivotCE blog shares the kind of hack that helps this device exist in a modern-day world: a USB-C upgrade for charging and data transfer.

The inline micro USB port used is a perfect fit for a USB-C upgrade, with only small amounts of PCB and case cutting required. Just make sure to get a breakout that has the appropriate 5.1 K resistors onboard, and follow [Alan]’s tutorial closely. He shows all the points you need to tap to let your TouchPad charge and transfer data to your computer, whether for firmware flashing or for daily use.

This hack doesn’t preserve the USB-OTG feature, but that’s fixable with a single WUSB3801. Apart from that, this mod is perfect for keeping your webOS tablet alive and kicking in today’s increasingly USB-C dominated world. Once you’ve done it, you might want to take care of your PlayStation 4 controllers and Arduino Uno boards, too.

The 3D-printed adapter shown assembled, with the USB cable's wires going into cable channels on the adapter and magnets slotted into the adapter's openings

Use Your Thinkpad X1 Tablet’s Keyboard Standalone

June 16, 2024 by Arya Voronova 8 Comments

Some hacks are implemented well enough that they can imitate involved and bespoke parts with barely any tools. [CodeName X]’s Thinkpad X1 Tablet Keyboard to USB adapter is one such hack – it let’s one reuse, with nothing more than a 3D printed part and a spare USB cable, a keyboard intended for the Thinkpad X1 Tablet (2016 or 2017).

The issue is, this keyboard connects through pogo pins and holds onto the tablet by magnets, so naturally, you’d expect reusing it to involve a custom PCB. Do not fret – our hacker’s take on this only needs aluminum foil and two small circular magnets, pressing the foil into the pins with the help of the printed part, having the USB cable pins make contact with the foil pads thanks to nicely laid out wire channels in the adapter. If you want to learn more, just watch the video embedded below.

Of course, this kind of adapter will apply to other similar keyboards too — there’s no shortage of tablets from last decade that had snap-on magnetic keyboards. But watch out; some will need 3.3V, and quite a few of them will use I2C-HID, which would require a MCU-equipped adapter like this wonderful Wacom rebuild did. Not to worry, as we’ve shown you the ropes of I2C-HID hacking.

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Your Surface RT Can Become Useful Again, With Raspberry Pi OS

February 2, 2024 by Jenny List 20 Comments

Over the years there have been so many times when Microsoft came up with a product that so nearly got it right, but which tanked in the market because the folks at Redmond had more of an eye to what fitted their strategy than what the customer wanted. The Surface RT was one of these: while the hardware was at least as good if not better than Apple’s iPad, its ARM CPU and an ill-advised signed-apps-only policy meant the tablet couldn’t access the huge existing library of Windows software.

Consumers didn’t want a tablet with next-to-no apps, so it failed miserably. Never mind though, because [Michael MJD] has a video showing how an RT can be given a new life from an unlikely source, with the installation of Raspberry Pi OS.

The video pretty closely follows this guide, and involves creating a Raspberry Pi OS install medium modified with RT-specific kernel modules and device tree. It’s possible because the 32-bit ARM architecture is one of those which Raspberry Pi OS targets, and while a few things such as graphics acceleration don’t work, it’s still successful (if a little slow).

Oddly this is a technique not unlike one from the earliest days of the Raspberry Pi, when we remember people in Raspberry Pi Jams showing off the ancestor of the modern OS running on cheap ARM-based netbooks. In those cases the hack relied on transplanting the Pi userland over the device’s existing kernel, we’d be interested in an explanation of how the RT can use the Pi kernel without the famous Broadcom BLOB intended for the Pi.

We have a soft spot for the RT, as we said a good product held back by a very bad software decision. Seeing it take a new life years later is thus pleasing to us.

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