Chapter 77 Projecting from a Chromebook

As a data scientist you will often be asked to give presentations on your findings to your employers, to your colleagues, or at workshops or conferences. So you will need to learn to connect your Chromebook to a projector.

77.0.1 Finding the right dongle

You won’t be able to plug your Chromebook in directly to a projector. You will need an adapter - often informally called a “dongle” to connect from your computer to the input cord of the projector. To figure out what kind of dongle you need, you need to know both the type of projector input you will be using and what type of ports you have on your computer to plug your dongle into. The two main types of inputs for projectors are VGA and HDMI. You can figure it out by looking at the cable coming from the projector.

Find out what kind of projector cable you will be using

You will then need to figure out what ports you have available on your computer. For example, the type of Chromebook I’m writing this on is a Chromebook Plus from Samsung. My computer has a USB-C port for connecting external devices like printers.

My Chromebook has a USB-C connector, but yours might be different.

To find out what kind of ports you have on your Chromebook you can go to the website https://www.google.com/chromebook . Then click on “Find Yours”.

Go to https://www.google.com/chromebook and click Find Yours

You will need to search or scroll down to find the version of Chromebook that you have. Once you have found your style of Chromebook click on it.

Find your style of Chromebook and click on it.

This should bring you to a screen with different options for purchasing a Chromebook. Any of those websites will have information about your Chromebook, but we have found that BestBuy often has the most information about ports, so click on the BestBuy logo on the left hand side to see more information.

Click on the BestBuy logo to see more information.

On the BestBuy page you can scroll down until you see the section called “Features”. Look for the word “Port” to find the type of port you have. In this case it is a USB-C port.

Find the type of port you have under Features.

Once you know the type of port you have on your Chromebook and the type of connection the projector cable has you can get the right dongle. Sometimes the place you will be presenting has a dongle available, but it is better to have two dongles. For each dongle you want one end to plug into the appropriate port on your computer (in my case USB-C). One of the dongles should have a VGA connection on the other end and the other dongle should have an HDMI connection. Then you will be prepared to connect your Chromebook to the vast majority of projectors you will use.

Get a projector with the port for your computer and a VGA and HDMI connection on the other end.

77.0.2 Projecting from your Chromebook

If you have the appropriate dongle you are now ready to project from your Chromebook. First, connect the dongle to the projector cord. Then connect the other end of the dongle to the port on your computer.

Connect the dongle to the projector cord and to the port on your Chromebook.

When you do this you will see that a window appears that says “Extending screen to” and then the name of the display. You should click on this box to open the display settings.

Click on the extend displays box to open your Displays settings.

There are two ways that the projector and your laptop can be connected.

Extended display means that the projected screen is like a second Desktop connected to the Desktop on your computer. So you can drag files from the screen on your laptop to the projected screen.
Mirrored display means that exactly what is on your Desktop is displayed on the projector.

Usually when you first connect a Chromebook to a projector it will extend the display. This means that if you open the Displays window by clicking on the extending displays box, it may appear on the projected screen but not on your Desktop! This is because you have extended your screen so you actually have two screens you are working with.

Extended display gives you two screens so what appears on your Desktop may differ from what appears on the projector screen.

Usually when presenting you want the same thing to appear on your Desktop screen and the projector screen. You can do this by changing the setting from “Extending Display” to “Mirrored Display”.

First you need to get the Displays Window to your Desktop. You can move your cursor all the way off the left or right hand side of the screen while watching the projector screen. You will see the cursor move up to the projector screen and you can click on the Displays window, hold down, and drag the display back to your Desktop.

Drag the displays window to your Desktop and click mirror displays.

Then if you click mirror displays you will see that your Desktop and the projector show the same thing.

Click the Mirror Displays box to mirror the displays.

You are now corrected and ready to present! Mirrored displays show the same thing on your laptop as on the projector.

Once displays are mirrored you see the same thing on the laptop and the remote version.

In a future class we will go over the software for making and delivering data science presentations.