Cortexa announces affordable touchscreen/PC

electron

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Cortexa Technology today announced the introduction of its new Cortexa View 1201, a premium quality touchscreen at an unprecedented low price point. Cortexa is now delivering the most robust, useable and dependable home automation system, complete with premium products, including touchscreens, at the lowest price point, making whole home automation affordable for all homeowners.

The Cortexa View 1201 is immediately available, and allows the user to control all aspects of their Cortexa Technology home automation system using the highly intuitive interface. Additionally, the touchscreen is equipped with a radio frequency keyboard and can be used for Internet access and email.

"At Cortexa, we are committed to delivering the best home automation products to the consumer at an affordable price without compromising quality," explains Billy Martin, chief executive officer, Cortexa Technology. "Touchscreens are an integral part of the home automation system, and this full featured panel is an important addition to our product line."

The 12" touchscreen is state-of-the-art design, with interchangeable faceplates in cream or black and mounts completely flush with the wall. The screen offers enhanced brightness and resolution, with a built-in 1GHz processor ensuring immediate response to all screen touches.

The Cortexa View 1201 is available for the low price of $1,295. Other companies offer touchscreens ranging from $2-8,000, making the Cortexa product the lowest priced, but highest quality product on the market.

Read the rest of this press release
 
"We knew it was possible to offer homeowners the touchscreen they wanted at an affordable price and still provide an excellent product," adds Martin. "We will continue to find ways to offer products and software enhancements without compromising quality at a price point that makes home automation affordable for all."

About Cortexa Technology, Inc.

Based in Austin, Texas, Cortexa Technology Inc. is a privately held company that develops and markets home automation systems to bring increased functionality and efficiency to all homes with an emphasis on mid-market homes. The Cortexa product is engineered from the ground up and includes both the software and solid state hardware. The company's founders are passionate about providing home automation for all and, during development of the product, focused on affordability, dependability and usability. To find out more about Cortexa Technology, visit www.cortexatechnology.com.
Contacts
Cortexa Technology
Alicia Quinn, 512-394-1275
[email protected]
 
Tombo said:
Wow I never considered $1200 a low price for a touch screen.  Thats a main stream price.  Even Dell is cheaper.
Cortexa's web site could really be more user friendly (no search option for instance), especially when trying to find a particular product, BUT, I don't think you are comparing apples to apples.

I "believe" that their touchscreen incorporates a PC as well, since they are touting an RF keyboard interface with it.

Not sure as I couldn't find that touchscreen described on their website (browsed for just a minute).

Also, if you look at electron's first post there is this quote:

The 12" touchscreen is state-of-the-art design, with interchangeable faceplates in cream or black and mounts completely flush with the wall. The screen offers enhanced brightness and resolution, with a built-in 1GHz processor ensuring immediate response to all screen touches.
 
Looks to be a VIA mini-ITX based touch screen and computer in a box, probably on a solid state disk, but I didn't really look to hard for that spec. It could probably run eXP or CE.Net easily enough. If you are going to use it as the overall automation system controller, the price isn't bad. But for an automation system wall pad it's a lot more expensive than it should be.
 
Dean,
What panel PCs with those specs have you found cheaper?
Note Surface Acoustic Wave touchscreen.
 
how would you power something like this? Put an outlet inside the wall it's mounted in? Is something like that even covered by building codes?
 
Dean,
What panel PCs with those specs have you found cheaper?
Note Surface Acoustic Wave touchscreen.

Oh, none. Which is why I said above that is you were using it as an overall controller, then it's not a bad price. But for just a wall pad, something that is CE.Net based (though the choices are somewhat limited still) could be a lot less expensive.
 
Our RelayTouch 12.1" monitor (selling now for 3 years) is a nearly identical design and is about half the retail cost. If you absolutely have to have an in-wall PC, there is ample room in our rough-in box to add your own VIA or other small form factor motherboard.

Over the years we have found that customers prefer to paint the bezel of our 12.1 to match their interior decor, so we provide it primered and ready for any type of paint. It can be painted to match the wall or the trim.
 
dwayne,

Where is the cheapest place to buy one of your screens? I could not find your product on www.automatedoutlet.com. What is the typical price?
 
You guys are comparing Apple to Oranges again.

The Correxa product is not just a monitor. It is a monitor with a computer embeded in one box. By the time your buy redradio and a PC, you spend way more, and you have to figure out how to run a VGA cable with a Serial cable, unless you buy the $1,390 redradio cat5 extender, you spend some heavy $$$.
Redradio is not the solution if you are trying to install in the market, especialy if you wont more then one in-wall touch screen.

You guys also did not read the full spec page. At the bottom you can see if you run the right wire, you do not have to put power were the touch screen goes.

It is unbeleivable that they are using Surface Acoustic Wave touchscreen. This makes the screen very clear, and scratch resistance, and I thought this was expensive.

I wish Cortexa had more info on there website,like what OS they are using, and if it is solid state.

Thanks
Mitch.
 
Since it doesn't have a hard drive, it would have to be solid state. The Cortexa guys will be our guest speakers this week, so you can ask all the questions you might have.
 
The Correxa product may be the best approach for many of you and I am not knocking it or any other in-wall PC solution. If you like the Correxa approach, then go for it. Nobu also makes a very nice in-wall PC product.

The choice for me when it comes to putting a PC in the wall or not is more of a philosophical one. We looked at making an in-wall PC several years ago and came to the conclusion that any PC in the wall would be either too weak to run all of the applications required in a robust automated home, or would be either noisy from CPU fans, or very expensive because of higher end fanless motherboards and power supplies (this was back when the only fanless VIA's were 533 Mhz).

I would much rather put the PC back in a home-run closet, where I can use a more powerful Pentium class motherboard with a full suite of components, and where it is more accessible for maintenance and upgrades. Or use one big honkin server to power multiple touch screens with a multi-port video card. I will be the first one to tell you as well that the choces for a closet PC are also limited (either too noisy, too expensive or just too big), but at least its back in the closet.

As far as extending the cables, it is expensive. The manufacturers have kept the price of extenders high because they sell mostly to corporate/KVM type users that can pay the price. But in the long run it make sense (IMHO) because the monitor part of the solution is likely to last for many years, far more than the CPU/components will.

I am sure to get some flak for this post, and that is fine. As many of you do, I spend the ample part of my day thinking about HA solutions, about the problems we face, and about the best logical way to address these problems. It is a highly subjective area, and strong opinions abound.
 
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