The Problem

We have owned a Surface Hub v1 for a number of years, and it has served us well. However, with Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 it was in danger of becoming a large piece of sculpture in the office. This is not just because we did not want to run a Windows 10 device when security patches were not available, but that the embedded version of Teams would not even load.

In theory the answer was easy, flip a switch on the Surface Hub so it uses an external replacement PC as opposed to it’s built in one. However, this process turned out to be harder than we expected as the Surface Hub is very picky over hardware settings.

The Solution

The whole process is very well documented by Ryan Wold, so I won’t repeat the details. However, I will mention the kit and settings we ended up using as we found getting any output on the Surface Hub meant using exactly the correct settings.

We aimed to use spare kit we had around, so our replacement PC was an old Lenovo M910s desktop PC. We picked this particular unit as we had at some point in the past fitted it with an Nvidia Geforce GTX 750Ti as we knew that a dedicated GPU would be needed to drive the 4K screen.

The consistent issue we had trying to get this working was that the PC would boot, we would see the BIOS boot screen, Windows would start to load, but as soon as the loading Windows spinner appeared the Surface Hub screen would go blank. If we had a second display attached, we could see that Windows could not detect the Surface Hub as a display.

The critical item it turned out was the display one, this needed to be an active cable. We ended up with a BENFEI HDMI to DisplayPort Adapter. Once we used this some of our display issues were sorted, Windows could detect the Surface Hub consistently.

The other critical step was that we had to set the resolution to 4K (3840 x 2160) and specifically with the refresh rate set at 30Hz. If we had a more powerful GPU we think we could have run at the default rate of 120Hz, but that was not an option with the kit we had.

30Hz is not the default refresh rate when the Surface Hub is detected as a monitor, so we got the blank screen. To change the refresh rate we had to have a second display attached. This is not a problem you might think, make the edit and remove the second display. However, Windows stores the refresh rates separately for each screen setup e.g. single display, dual display etc. This meant when we disconnected the second display the refresh rate for the Surface Hub returned to its 120Hz default.

So for now we need to keep the second display attached

But not all the setup was so hard, getting the Surface Hub cameras, audio devices, touch screen and pens working was easy. All that needed was a USB cable and the right drivers

Where we are now

So now we have a working replacement PC connected to Surface Hub. This PC is domain joined, so staff can login for Teams meetings and use all the physical features of the Surface Hub. This is not a perfect replacement, but it at least means the Surface Hub is not just E-Waste.

We aim to improve on where we are.

• Hopefully fixing the need for a second screen. Worst case using a HDMI Dummy Plug Headless Ghost Display
• Now we know the hardware works, setup the PC up as a Teams Room. as the Surface Hub previously was, so the device can be invited to meetings as a location.

I will post again, if we have any successes

For the original version of this post see Richard Fennell's personal blog at Getting a Surface Hub v1 Working with a Replacement PC