Home made Touchscreen PC: Mainlobby / CQC

mbahr

Member
I'm interested in building a number of touchscreen computers to control mainlobby or CQC.

I'm considering using the 7" lilliput touch screen connected to a VIA mini-itx board running Windows XP (or even Windows XP Embedded).

VIA makes a range of boards using their own precessors, and they seem to vary in price from around $130 to $290. For instance, the VIA EPIA M10000 goes for around $160 and actually looks useful as a starting point for a mediapc.

Does anyone have experience with the VIA series of boards, and know which processor and speed may be best suited for user interface and/or streaming media?

-Mike
 
There's a thread about *some* of this here.

I've had issues in the past with my VIA mobo and streaming video, matter of fact so have many many AVS'ers, but there's also many folks without issues so that's a crapshoot IMO. Regular UI painting seems to be ok. Specifically I have the A7V600 with the KT600 chipset. It worked fine, then adding some drivers screwed stuff up. Rather than deal with it, I just made it my CCTV server.

Also, I know a few CQC'ers have done a variety of interesting things wit those. They're not really HA guys, so they don't really get over here much, but you could try cross-posting there to see if you get a response.
 
Thanks for the reply, IVB.

I've posted a similar question at the thread you recommended.

What OC are you running on your VIA setup?

-Mike
 
Hi Mike and welcome to CT.

You may also want to try posting this question over at AnandTech Forums as well.

They specialize more in the mobo specifics (glance at their "Motherboards" forums). :lol:

Regards,

BSR
 
mbahr, another method is to use a standard higher powered pc and connect multiple touchscreens to it via a multihead VGA card.
 
DavidL,

I thought about that. Not sure I want to go that route. I also looked at 3rd party XP Unlimited as the means to achieve thin clients. Not sure I want to go that route, either.

I was caught off guard re: the screen resolution. I didn't expect that. I'm still researching options.

-Mike
 
I think he forgot that issue was brought up on the CQC thread by one of the CQC guys who has knowledge about this. The issue is more about what the native resolution is vs scaled, so as to not to end up with suboptimal PQ.

jkmonroe said:
if that 7" lilliput is native 800x480 resolution make sure to do your research on the motherboard first. from my understanding the via mobos use the s3 chipset which cannot do 800x480 natively. also, if you get the IDE->CF adapter you can easily run XP and the IV on a 2GB flash card.
 
And that is a CQC issue? It's not a Mainlobby one. Just not sure I am following mbahr's thoughts / issues.
 
no, not a CQC issue. It's a hardware thing, brought up on the CQC forum. And it's not really an issue per-se, but it's something that could potentially make the screen look softer or choppier than need be.

The concern is about scaled resolutions vs native resolutions. From what i've learned recently, in one world, you send a 1:1 pixel mapping, which is inherently a better performing and quality picture than a scaled one. If you're going to do work to setup a TS, may as well get hardware that will not add unecessary steps to a good PQ. Doesn't matter what app you run on it, scaling won't look as good as native.

At least that's what I've learned in the last few weeks/months anyhow.
 
The Lilliputs will scale various incoming signal formats. To avoid it, you have to send it a signal at its native 800x480 format, which is not a common format. Obviously, for a couple hundred bucks, it doesn't include the highest quality scaler in the world, and it won't nearly as nice as if you send it native format.
 
Ahh... Yes, as was pointed out, someone on another forum pointed out the screen resolution issue to me.

I haven't heard back from Lilliput in regards to my resolution question, although I know they've opened my e-mail.

Just curious if anyone knows how these devices are normally driven. Do integrators rely on the scaling, or is there a graphics card that will drive it at native resolution, or....?

-Mike

-Mike
 
Have you thought about using a program called powerstrip to get around the 800x480 resolution issue? I used to use it with my HTPC and as I reccall you can tweak the resolution of a video card to almost anything with this program.

Here is a link to their website:

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

I am very interested in making some HA PCs for my house. Please be sure to post your progress.

Rod
 
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