Small touch screen question

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W.Feather

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I am working on getting my families home theater setup ready (finnaly)....and we are working on our cork flooring in the next 2 or three weekends.....while we are reflooring I had the idea of using a small touch screen(7 inch or so) as a remote at the theater seating we have....

so I want to run the wires for it under the flooring while we have the carpet ripped up, and before we put down the cork. What type of touch screen would be best for repeated use, with a long lifespan.......and what type of cables would I need? I was thinking ill need a power cable(probably will just run an extension cord to the seating to cover power), but to carry the video feed and the touch screen input is where I am confused(never done a touch screen)....is this going to be just a USB cord?


I have no issues in having to solder something in place(ie run a USB cable to the spot, and end up having to cut off the end and solder it to the connection from the screen).....

any ideas?
 
Hi

The touch screen is going to be connecting to what? a PC located in another room??? what application will be running on it??? If you look on eBay you could find 15" ELO Touch Screens for $40.

At home I have a setup like this:

Touch Screen installed in the kitchen, It connects to a screen less laptop I have stored in another room. I ran two cat5 cables from the laptop to the kitchen touch screen. One is used for USB and one is used for Video. I used the following adapters

USB over Cat5: http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10303&cs_id=1030304&p_id=6042&seq=1&format=2

VGA over Cat5 (Got mine on eBay)

I will be running mControl on the laptop for home automation.
 
Also, are you planning on doing home automation? or do you simply want to use a touch screen has a universal remote controller? (Turn on the TV, DVD Player etc..)
 
sorry, forgot to mention it will be hooked up(hopefully) to an HTPC that will be located a max of 30 feet away.


home automation is a probability for the room atleast(I personally want to have it set up so the screen goes down on command, and doing the diming of lights and such), and will be used as a controller for everything(HTPC included, HTPC will be using XBMC, probably on Ubuntu 10.4).


as for software, im not really sure(this whole thing is in the planning stages, just want to get wires laid under the flooring before we lay the flooring :) ), I was thinking something like this: http://dhs.webatu.com/ (in which case the HTPC will run a windows OS not linux, unless I can use that within WINE, or a windows environment)

edit: thanks for the subscribed :p hopefully i can have a work log build up for it when I get that far
 
if you are planning on just using WMC on the TV and the touch screen they need to be the same resolution.... otherwise it will not work.

so a 720p or 1080p touchscreen.... an ELO one will not work because windows will not allow 2 monitors on different resolutions with mirroring.

So unless you are using a full on home automation system connected to a USB-UIRT.... do not bother.

if you want a touchscreen remote to control WMC, use a ipod touch or ipad...

you can use the ipad/ipod with a redeye or some other WIFI to IR adapter.
 
well, the use of a redeye or something is in the plans(for the whole house though)

i was not planing on just using XBMC for the TV, will also use the HTPC with mouse/keyboard, to play some games like You Dont Know Jack and some internet browsing.

I dont plan on having the touch screen show what the TV shows, more like a 2nd monitor, where I can view the library, or do pay/pause and the likes....no need to play video or anything on the touch screen.

hope this makes sense? basically not anything more than a remote
 
nope, thats not me.......



i'm not intending to use the touch screen as a viewing monitor....just a remote....no idea why in the hell it would need to mimic the projector?!?!?!? to my understanding i can run it as a SEPARATE monitor(much like 98 % of these boards does on their desktop) with a different resolution(every OS ive ever seen allows you to run separate monitors with different resolutions)......


i just need it to have a window where I can control the components, and lights/screen for the room....
 
g/l

I am honestly telling you that as of now there is no good way of controlling a HTPC that is running WMC or XBMC with a touchscreen that is not mirroring the primary monitor.

there is no app, that is not $1000, that can do what you want.

myself and many others have tried.....

so write your own code..... and then maybe you get it to work.

you are going to need a I/R hardware controller and then a UI and backend software controller... also a lighting protocol and more.... this will be very involved to it to work 80% of the time.

save your $$ and buy a control 4 or creston style system if that is what you want.

I have homeseer and I have used mControl and both are reasonable for what you want, but require thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to get them to work well.... with lights, A/V, HVAC and such.
 
i figured there are not too many options

programing an interface would be tricky(although i have a rudimentry understanding of java, my dad codes in java on a daily basis...just no GUI stuff).......


its still more of an idea(if you get my point)


we are also getting an iTouch on the cheap and doing one of the IR things in the room with WiFi for the majority of control, this is just an extra cool idea i figured i would throw out there, ill probably wire it anyhow, worst case i have a wire in the floor, not like i couldnt find a use for it :).....iPod connector anyone?!!?
 
I've been looking for a way for windows to display two separate resolutions mirror the desktop. The best I have come up with is extended which is not mirroring and expanded which will stretch the desktop across 2 diff monitors but all in all its not essentially mirroring and I would like to mirror the primary display. Does anyone know if running two video cards will resolve this issue?
 
I had the same issue about using a touch screen to control WMC. I coud do it, but i had to drop my 1080p screen to 1024x768 which yeah was not that great... but the touch screen was NICE.

Soo im still hoping for SOME kind of resolution (no pun intended) as well to use my extra touch screen as a controller... even at my office for music playing or a remote because its a pain to use my little remote sometimes
 
If WMC and WMP are open at the same time, they display the same player info for audio at least. I have not done this with video. So if dual monitors are used, one could put WMC on the 1080 display, and WMP in library view on the touch screen. This might be a cheap work around.
 
J-Will said:
If WMC and WMP are open at the same time, they display the same player info for audio at least. I have not done this with video. So if dual monitors are used, one could put WMC on the 1080 display, and WMP in library view on the touch screen. This might be a cheap work around.
Click to expand...

interesting.....any way to do this with XBMC?
 
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