My Touch Screen project

Steve

Senior Member
I just completed the installation of a 15" ELO Intellitouch Touch Screen into the wall in my kitchen. The screen is currently driven by an old out of service laptop running WiFi until I run an ethernet cable and expand my hub. The screen will be the main entry point into my entire system, controlling Charmed Quark (CQC) and the Elk M1 via the CQC driver. The interfaces still need to be designed and built, but the hardware is now in place.

Ok, so this is a 15" panel mount touch screen that is Intellitouch (all glass, no film) and configured as a panel mount. I got a great deal on it in open box but brand new.

I had a perfect mounting location in the kitchen in a wall that backed up to the laundry room. The pictures pretty much walk you through the process, but I'll summarize here.

1. Cut 'inspection' hole in laundry room at approximate location desired. I ran into a stud and wiring that ghad to be dealt with. I cut out the stud section and used the wiring to hard wire the screen and laptop.

2. Cut hole in front size to proper dimension.

3. Mounted the bracket. It is a long bracket that had L-brackets on each end and attached to the screen via VESA mount. The bracket was mounted in the wall using toggle bolts thru furring strip spacers. Bracket was set to approximate needed depth.

4. Screen was put in place and screwed into loosely held main bracket via 4 VESA screws.

5. Shims were used to align screen flush with wall and everything tightened down.

6. Wires were pulled out of outlet below, new wires added and an intermediate Jbox installed re joining these wires plus adding the hard wired cords for screen and laptop.

7. Shelf put in laundry room for laptop and wires routed up to it.

8. Access door matching laundry room cabinet door installed to cover access hole.

9. A frame was built out of a $6 piece of trim from Lowe's,. I wanted a low profile so regular picture fram stock would not work.

10. Frame was test fit and attached via 4 screws thru the back.

11. Frame removed and painted then attached permanently.

Thats it!

Of course it sounds easier here. It was a bit of a pain getting brackets in wall, redoing the wiring and building the frame. Some things got done twice, but the results were worth it IMHO.

Please let me know if you have any difficulty with pictures and any comments. Enjoy...

Access the pictures

Edit 2/25/07 to fix link per PM.
 
That looks really nice! I wish I could do that, but I'm already going to get sued when I move out of this apartment so I better not make it any worse.
 
Steve,
Do you find that a 15" monitor is too large? If you hadn't gotten it for a deal would you have gone smaller? What color did you paint the frame? It looks really good.
 
No, I don't think it is too large,. In fact I was originally looking for a 17". It is a great spot so it accomodates it nicely. Since I will have things like recipes, etc on there for the wife I wanted it large and easy to see and navigate. It looks just like a picture on the wall. It would be too big if it were more like an alarm keypad but not for its intended use.

Is anyone having trouble going through the pictures? Not sure if it is my host screwing up?
 
Neat job. I use the ELOs at work for touch screen access to paper handeling equipment. In my case interfaced to a WinSystems 586 card with a few added cards like a vga video card and a 144 point I/O board.
 
Rupp said:
Where did you get the touch screen?
I got them at http://www.techforless.com/cgi-bin/tech4less. They were only on there for less than a week. Their stuff changes over quickly. I just got lucky. I actually got an AccuTouch resistive ELO on Ebay for what I thought was a good price ($430) and then I saw the Intellitouch, what I preferred after and couldn't resist. It is an $800 retail screen sold on net for $675, dealer cost of around $575 and I picked it up for $310 shipped.
 
very nice project. I put a swingout bracket on a 15" touchscreen in our kitchen about a year ago, and it resulted in bringing my wife into the electronic age. She's now on the web, email, HA - it's great!
 
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