Touch Screen LCD Monitors for HTPC Control

I have a 15" Preh touchscreen monitor connected to my dual-head ati 9700. I use Mainlobby & Dvd lobby as the touchscreen front-end, it's basically built for this.


Preh is an industrial OEM version of the ELO touchscreen, made for heavy use. I picked it up used on ebay for about $80. Requires a free serial port, but it's beautiful, & easy. The only "catch" is it needs to be monitor #1 in my setup for the elo software to work correctly. I can take a picture if you would like.

Thanks that would be wonderful.


Do you have a link to the ELO equipment? $80 is a good buy. You did well.

I should mention that several other mainlobby users opted for a progear wireless touchpad. It's a windows 98 touchscreen tablet. Mainlobby is now a client-server application, so the progear acts as a client.

Quote:
never mind! I can google too

Elo can be found at htp:// www.elotouch.com


Elo touchscreen's on ebay are usually expensive. Try and find one of the brands that oem's there stuff (nec, ibm, preh, etc...) and you will pay a lot les for the same thing.

http://search.*********/search/searc...0&BasicSearch=

don't know if this will fit your bill..but i was thinking of doing the same thing.. was going to use this monitoe below..it's 7" but seems like it owuld be perfect..

http://www.digitalww.com/VGA_TM_710VG.htm


brickie

i know they appear out of stock,but if you do a search you will find these on ebay as well..


brickie

Brickie,


Check this out. A guy took an A-tech Fabrication HTPC case, and put the 7" touchscreen monitor you are looking at on the front panel. Very cool....

http://www.busch.nu/busch_svc-107td.htm

thanks for link..AWESOME!!!!i saw another guy do it with a smaller screen,but man that 7" screen is nice..although his computer was a little too cramped for my taste..


brickie

I have a Progear and found it to be annoyingly slow even with an RDP style connection so abandoned it (I'm using a lot of alpha blended graphics).


I went with what I would call a premium solution and that's using a Planar PT150MU (15" touch screen LCD) hooked up to a Mini-ITX computer (2"x7"x10" Casetronic case) sitting under one of my theater chairs. The 15" size is kind of big, but I wanted 1024x768 resolution and couldn't find anything smaller with that resolution that was also touchscreen. The controller UI is implemented as a HouseBot software remote. It was around $1200 for the hardware, but compared to a Crestron or AMX solution, it's like what, 10x or so cheaper?


I'm pretty happy with it.

- Jason

You can always buy an old fujitsu penpad off ebay. They are tablet PC's from about 5 years ago, run anything from a 486DX100 to a 800x600TFT 233MHz Pentium, and can be had for less than 100 bucks. some are pen operated, but a couple of models were touch screen. I use them as interfaces for stuff all over the house, and a couple as lcd photo frames...

i know many control drapes and screens with remotes,but is there software that would allow a computer to control ALL these functions from a seat mounted touch screen,and not bother with a rewmote at all?\\


brickie

Brickie,


You are looking for mainlobby, a slinke and an x-10 controller. I am doing exactly what you describe, but add lighting, hvac, monitors for the driveway, doorbell, motion detectors, etc...


I use mainlobby in conjunction with a program called homeseer that does the home automation heavy lifting

how reliable is your setup? and that does sound exactly like what i had in mind..


brickie

orbitzboy - any idea how I might integrate a front door security camera into a Picture-in-Picture frame on the screen? We can't hear the doorbell in the HT. I've been thinking of setting up a motion detector, but I'd like to see who is at the door before I pause the movie. (Too many door to door sales folks in our area).

I checked out some of the stuff on Ebay, how do you integrate a tablet pc into the htpc. Do you have to get a wireless setup (802.11b,g) or is there a better way? Basically, it seems like a great idea of having the htpc interface run from the tablet pc which you can essentially use as a remote and preview device, but I'm not sure how everything would work. Any advice and help is always appreciated. Thanks!


-G

Bumping this thread..Curious myself how one gos about making a tablet pc work with your existing htpc? I want to use a tablet or touch screen monitor for htpc control..Will look into main lobby for front-end. Main question is, how does tablet "hook" into htpc? Is it better to use a tablet pc, or a touch screen monitor? wired or wireless doesn't really matter to me..maybe a little.


brickie

I am using both a tablet and a connected 7" Xenarc touchscreen with Mainlobby. The 7" touchscreen is connected to the server computer, in the Theater, which controls all of the IR devices in the house using irzones, as well as homeseer/stargate on another computerfor lights and HVAC. The touch screen is the right size for the theater chairs and its stand sits on top of one of the cup holders.


I use a tablet pc, connected through XP Remote Desktop to access the server from the bedroom. The advantage of the wireless tablet (gotta have a LAN setup) is no wires, duh. The tablet size is too big for use in the theater in my setup. With the wired touchscreen I ran the VGA/USB wire up the inside of the arm and they are not very visible since the chair is black.

Okay John, It sounds like the touch screen might be the way i want to go..I was considering using Main Lobby to.Does it have support for X-10 products?I believe i saw that if you have a cm11a then you can control your lights thru Main Lobby..As nice as homeseer appears to be hoping not to use it right now..Do you use Girder for anything? I'm mainly hoping to use the touch screen to launch zoomplayer to projector.Maybe display image(wallpaper) when not in use, and x-10 control would be nice..What do you think of the new 8" touch screens?


brickie