(posted this in another forum, but I think the DIY discussion are more robust here)

As my cameras/rigs have been getting smaller and lighter (BMPCC and GH4), most of the readily available monitors seem hopelessly large and clunky, expensive and underpowered.

Even my personal favorite DP-6, which seemed impossibly svelte when new, now feels heavy, chunky and unwieldy. I recently built my own BMPCC/GoPro lightweight gimbal, and that's an especially good candidate for a small/light screen.

Although there are hopeful signs pointing the right direction (Ursa Viewfinder if it ran off a 9v / HDMI, SmallHD 502/Sidefinder), many people like me just wish they could use their smartphone as a monitor.

Or better yet, what about just using a smartphone LCD or OLED screen? The main problem seems to be the secretive, closed MIPI standard that most phones and tablets use.

I've been following this Hackaday project for awhile, and they look to be on the verge of selling a commercial controller to take an HDMI input and run a MIPI DSI panel:

https://hackaday.io/project/364-mipi...ldhdmi-adapter

There's a poll up right now to gauge interest, and see which panels to support out-of-the-box, among the iPhone 4, 5, Galaxy S3/S4, and Droid DNA:

http://doodle.com/uv283rp366prppnt

No pricing yet, but the Bill of Materials is under $40, so my best guess is the board will sell for less than double that. I really like the idea of being able to buy a cheap smartphone replacement panel (>$25 for iPhone 4/5, >$80 for 1080p Galaxy), adding a 5v micro-USB power source (that can run for hours and hours, maybe days), and slapping it in a SUPER thin 3D-printed enclosure.

It may not be a fancy turnkey solution, but the possibilities are interesting. The Spartan-6 FPGA that it's based on should have plenty of horsepower to support all the advanced monitor features, if some enterprising coder wants to write custom firmware for guides, peaking, false color, histograms, LUTs, etc. etc. My two main cameras have most of that built-in, so 90% of the time, I just want a nice, bright monitor to frame and focus. They're already talking about testing the 2560x1440 Galaxy Note 4 screen, so there may be some 4K possibilities out of this little board, as well.

What do you folks think?