Second monitor questions. Touch Screen and use as default.

[sundawg#WP]

Awhile back I posted about my wife dropping her Surface 2 on the tile and rendered it useless. I got a replacement screen, but while messing with the internal connectors for the digitizer, I broke a connector on a pcb. Anyway...what I'm interested in doing is getting a smaller 1080 touch screen and connecting it via the micro hdmi. I ordered a micro hdmi cable, so I haven't had a chance to try this out yet.

First, can you use a touch monitor with the Surface 2 (i.e. use micro hdmi and USB)?

Second, can you default the Surface 2 to use the second monitor as the default without messing with the charms on the main screen (i.e. reg hack or something)?

What I'm hoping to do is to mount the Surface 2 to the back of the monitor and put it on an mounting arm for my wife in the kitchen.

TIA

If I don't hear anything back, I'll let you know what I find out. If this doesn't work, I'll be piecing the Surface 2 components out if anyone is interested.

 

[sundawg#WP]

Update for anyone wondering or looking for these answers via search.

I have a micro-HDMI adapter plugged into my Surface 2 going to a second monitor (1080). Since I don't have a touch-screen monitor yet I'm just using a wireless mouse for some initial testing.

I can in fact completely disconnect the Surface 2's screen and I can use the device with the second monitor and mouse. The only thing that you don't see is the startup screen that says Surface. Once the boot cycle finishes, the second monitor works as I would expect without any fuss. Even from a cold boot it continues to remember to project to the secondary display only - seems to know what to do based on the existence of the second monitor and what you last set it to do. You can see update install progress and of course log in from the second monitor just fine.

I also noticed that the sound is rerouted to my second monitor via HDMI - which is pretty nice, but confused me at first when I couldn't hear anything coming from the Surface 2.

At this point I can at least make use of this otherwise broken Surface 2. Hopefully I'll find out USB touch interfaces are supported natively in RT. I'll be looking for a cheap touch monitor to try out. Fingers crossed! I'll update again when I find out.