Hi Ben,
As a musician I usually carry a lot of paper with me with sheet music.
A few years back I tried using an iPad but I didn't like it because the screen is too small and you see only one page. I made a pedal for it from a bluetooth keyboard which worked fine but sometimes I accedently pressed the forward paddle twice and got lost in the pages. That happens very quickly because my feet usually tap in rhythm with the music so you really have to be careful not to start tapping the paddle.
Also it ran on batteries so I had to remind myself to take extra batteries etc. Not very handy.
So I stopped using that and got back to paper. But now I have a Windows tablet with normal USB-ports so I can attach anything to it without the bluetooth hassle.
But still it's a small screen and you can view only one page.
That made me think. Why not make a dual screen tablet. Then you can view two pages and if I happen to press the forward button twice I still have the page I need on the left screen.
I have a Chuwi tablet which has a mini HDMI output. Same as the Surface tablet I believe. So perhaps it is possible to make some sort of sleeve with an extra LCD-panel in it.
I am not sure if there are LVDE boards available which can drive an LCD-panel using HDMI input, but that sounds reasonable to me. So it can be done.
An other option is a Raspberry Pi. It's easy to use Linux and use a teensy for the USB-buttons.
Some Dutch guy made a converter for the DPI pins to VGA so then you can hook up an extra monitor to it.
And if you use two old laptop screens it can be done cheaply.
I hope you find this an interesting problem and I look forward to how you are going to tackle it.
Grtz,
Hans
