HDMI to VGA in one Easy Step

If you have a nice new laptop with only an HDMI output, and a rather old monitor with only a VGA input, then I’ve got some good news. I’ve just discovered that you can now get an adapter (like the one above) which for a lot less than the iPad one (like around 15 quid) will convert your twenty first century digital output into twentieth century analogue signals. This is particularly useful if you work somewhere where every lecture theatre has VGA connections for laptops. Like The University of Hull. The adapter I got was from a UK seller with good feedback, you can get them directly from China for even less.

Important Note: There are a lot of people selling HDIM to VGA cables that purport to connect HDMI and VGA systems together. These will not work. The kind of thing you want must have a built in chip that performs the digital to analogue conversion. Make sure that the thing you buy looks like the picture above (with quite a big lump on the VGA socket) and look for phrases like “with chip” and discussions of which video modes are supported in the description.

Comments

[Ricardo Vieira]

Hi Rob! :)

You can specify a device? A link to the website where you have made the purchase.

Best regards,
R. Vieira.

[Rob]

This is what I bought, although I think they have the price wrong at the moment:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HDMI-Input-to-VGA-Adapter-Converter-For-PC-Laptop-NoteBook-HD-DVD?item=200734173249&cmd=ViewItem&_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D5%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D8046958842436027975

[Stewart Watkiss]

I ordered one on Friday from Amazon.co.uk in advance of my Raspberry Pi coming. Not yet received so I've not tried it yet. They had about 10 in stock on Friday, but they've now sold out.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007KEIRNG?ie=UTF8&tag=watkissonline-21&linkCode=shr&camp=3194&creative=21330&creativeASIN=B007KEIRNG&redirect=true&ref_=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

It was £15.52

[Rob]

Oooh. Raspberry Pi. Let me know how you get on.

[Mathew J. Spearey]

Oh, thanks Rob, I had seen these before but they where a bit costly. This will be perfect for when I manage to get hold of a Raspberry Pi .

[Stewart Watkiss]

I received both the adapter and a Raspberry Pi.

Adapter works well on my Android tablet and Linux laptop, but couldn't get better than 960 x 704 resolution on the Raspberry Pi.

See: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/absolute-beginners/hdmi-to-vga-2/page-2

I haven't had chance to do much with the Pi so far, but I've put together a quick review here: http://www.penguintutor.com/linux/raspberrypi

I'm now working on getting a web server up and running and I hope to try and get it talking to the Arduino when I get some more time.