Using an Android tablet with PDF and Aldiko for presentations to VGA or HDMI projectors

I use a 15.6" laptop for daily work, but it is kind of heavy lugging it to conferences and talks. This is aggravated by the roller case for it which has some weight in it. Add a power supply, and other sundry items, and it becomes inconvenient when I am not traveling.

So, when I saw someone givining a presentation off of an Apple iPad, I was jealous and thought: why can't I do the same from my Android tablet? Turns out that the iPad has a display port, and Apple sells a display port to VGA adapter.

This adapter allows the iPad to display to a normal VGA projector, the most common type of projectors still in use at most venues.

No Android phone or tablet that I know of have a display port though, so this route is not an option for Android devices.

But my phone (Sony Xperia Arc) came with a micro HDMI port, and a micro HDMI cable, so it can be plugged into an HDTV directly for output.

So did my tablet: Acer Iconia A500. It has a micro HDMI port.

So, I went on a quest to see how can I output from HDMI to VGA, and found a few solutions. All of them rely on having a chip inside the adapter to convert the digital HDMI signal to analog VGA.

You can buy it from Newegg: 1080p Micro HDMI to VGA Video Adapter Converter, or do as I did, get a similar cable for the same price or less, from China/Hong Kong via eBay with free shipping.

How that I have the hardware pieces in place, and can display to an HDTV or a VGA projector, what about the software pieces?

I create my presentations in Libre Office Impress. If I use my laptop, I use Impress to run the presentation as well. But Libre Office does not exist for Android, so what are my options.

Well, Impress can save a presentation as PDF, so all I need is a PDF reader on the tablet.

It so happens that Aldiko, a book reader that I already use on Android has a free PDF reader. So all I need is to import the PDF from my laptop to the tablet.

How do I do that? Well, the simplest way is to email it to yourself and then import it from Gmail to Aldiko on the tablet.

My tablet also has a feature that I never went out seeking in the first place, but proved useful: a full USB port. By copying the PDF file to my USB key, I was able to import it into Aldiko.

Now I can do presentations without a laptop!