Touchscreen Options

avtexan

New Member
I was trying to make my old 15 Borg touchscreen displays work on my CQC system and I think it is time to punt.

I have looked at iPads with a removable doc or surface mount. I can get the 5th gens for $280. The docs may cost more than the iPads. My CQC templates run great on the updated web server. The iPad would also give me access to some of my automation apps if needed.

I have also thought about MICROSOFT surface and keep eveything in the windows environment.

Alternatively I have back boxes from the Borgs already in the wall so I could do a mini PC and 15 touchscreen.

Or instead of the mini PC run one of the virtual setups with the 15 touchscreen mentioned above.

I have looked enough that I have brain overload. Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?
 
To me, as long as you can get an aesthetically pleasing result, I think the mini-PC plus regular touch screen is a better deal. It keeps the PC and the touch screen separate for separate upgrade paths moving forward. And it can provide a lot of screen real estate for a quite reasonable price. HD multi-touch monitors are quite reasonable these days. You could also use a Cat-x KVM extender/switcher and put the PC in the closet with the master server for more centralized maintenance
 
Seems like a mini-pc would be real overkill for a touchscreen controller these days.  A Raspberry pi as the controller with any HDMI/USB touchscreen should do the trick.  I have an older iPad that I no longer use for any touch control apps as the thing is just a dog now.  Every time an IOS update would come out it would get slower and slower.  Now it's just too slow to deal with.
 
I just put together a 7" touchscreen unit with a RPI for a ham radio AllStar node and have been very impressed with the performance and how cheap it was to do.  I don't know that a 7" touchscreen would work for your automation controls especially when you're coming from a 15" display, it will feel very limited in size.  At the other end of the spectrum, I have a 22" touchscreen that I use with my brewing system that I also run on a RPI.  It's great having so much real estate on the screen for controlling the whole brewing process.
 
Welcome to to the Cocoontech forum avtexan.
 
Here have tinkered with a mini Pipo X7 Windows 10 computer tacked to the back of a 17" multitouch open frame monitor with a side mounted Kinect.  Worked fine.
 
DIY'd a 42" LCD monitor mounted vertically kiosk using an RPi2.  Worked fine.
 
Favorite automation touch screen are my hardware modded 7" tabletops which run Android, Linux or Windows.
 
I use Intel NUC PC and Dell Touchscreen to build my own 21" touchscreen for Omni Pro II
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qegZ8UwDRmA
 
Relating to OS's for Touchscreen my favorite it Linux and my easiest to work with is Windows touchscreens.
 
Relating to Wintel Embedded touchscreens here have the most flexibility in controling the tabletop tablets remotely from the mothership.
 
Currently utilizing 15 touchscreens.  I have used a srom (realtek)programmer to customize the MACs a bit and run an agent on the clients which connect to the mothership. Added an SSD drive and RTC (with Battery).  Utilize the Gb port with POE on them and inside there is a combo WLAN / Bluetooth stick. The screens dim, reboot, run screen savers as directed locally or remotely.  The touchcreen application runs local and mother ship scrips or connected status or switches to the mothership.  Mostly though they are left in screen saver mode these days.
 
In a quickie recap as mentioned above it is easy today to DIY your own touchscreen. 
 
Most cost reasonable these days are Android tablets and now Windows tablets.  Personally I like my touchscreen ethernet connected rather than wirelessly. 
 
JonW said:
Seems like a mini-pc would be real overkill for a touchscreen controller these days.  A Raspberry pi as the controller with any HDMI/USB touchscreen should do the trick.  I have an older iPad that I no longer use for any touch control apps as the thing is just a dog now.  Every time an IOS update would come out it would get slower and slower.  Now it's just too slow to deal with.
 
But it won't run Windows. If he runs Windows he gets our full bore touch screen client. It also means he can run other CQC functionality there later if he wants to.
 
Dean Roddey said:
But it won't run Windows. If he runs Windows he gets our full bore touch screen client. It also means he can run other CQC functionality there later if he wants to.
 
Have you messed with Windows IoT core on RPI?
 
LQtechvn said:
I use Intel NUC PC and Dell Touchscreen to build my own 21" touchscreen for Omni Pro II
 
Nice video, well done! What software are you running on your touchscreen? Is that custom as well?
 
Here tested XP on an RPi2 using QEMU which worked but was too slow. 
 
I tested here using the MicroXP and my XPe images.
 
That said it is faster on the Rock64 2Gb computer and probably way better to try this on the Rock64 4Gb computer running off of an eMMC.
 
The Rock64 4Gb with eMMC computer is much faster than any RPi including the newest RPi3 B+.
 
[youtube]http://youtu.be/hPAvybmy1Bk[/youtube]
 
RPi 2-3 Ubuntu Mate - QEMU XPe Installation 
 
The above noted I can run Homeseer Windows Touch application using Mono on the ARM CPUs but the graphics are still a bit slow using mono.
 
It does better using Wine or PlayOnLinux and I can get Microsoft SAPI to run in Wine or PlayonLinux easily with any Intel CPU and testing with ARM on Pine64 (with 2Gb of RAM).
 
Cost Wise it is much more reasonable to utilize a Micro Wintel machine or tablet.  I did have issues with the PipoX7 in that I could suspend it but not wake it up via the USB NIC.  The PipoX7 only had two Gb of RAM and did fine but more ram would be better.
 
I did push the PipoX7 streaming live video via KODI, using the Microsoft Kinect for VR / Motion detection to the automation mothership, CCTV streaming and HSTouch (all concurrent with really no issues) running Windows 10.
 
Looking for my testing pictures with PipoX7, Kinect and multitouch screen.  Purchased a few Kinects here in bulk and really only tested one.  Footprint is kind of large with a touchscreen and Kinect mounted above it.
 
I'm kinda surprised nobody has mentioned these little Windows 8" or so touchscreen computers.  I have one that runs full fledged Windows 8, and someone recently sent me one running W10.  Throw a decent frame around that to hide the charging connector, and you could be done.  They're thin as an iPad.
 
Something like This
 
Here did suggest the little 8" Pipo Windows 8-10 / split with Android on Atom computers to the Homeseer folks. My Pipo X7 came with Windows 8.1 and I updated it to Windows 10 and split the OS (with another 32Gb SD card) to booting Ubuntu, Android or Windows 10.  Worked fine.  It is the same motherboard as the Pipo X7.  Kodi worked best in Windows 10 mode via HDMI and I couldn't get all of the drivers working in Ubuntu and then over a few months did get the drivers working.
 
There are a few Homeseer folks running Homeseer 3 and Homeseer touch on these Pipo computers.
 
Personally do not like the case with the tilted top touchscreen.  That said you could probably jury rig it to mount on a wall (flat).
 
It has built in Wireless, Bluetooth and an internal NIC (USB) same as the PipoX7 micro computer.
 
pipo1.jpg
 
JonW said:
Have you messed with Windows IoT core on RPI?
 
As I understand it, that doesn't include the Windows desktop, it's just the core of Windows. Since the purpose in this case is to run the touch screen client, that makes it a non-starter AFAIK.
 
Those little Pipo computers have piqued my interest in the past... an old daycare put one in to run the kiosk check-in software after the iPads stopped working reliably (they added iPads to every classroom and overwhelmed their crappy wifi).  For the purpose, they worked well.  That said, for a wall-mount application, one of those super thin ones like I posted above seems like it'd work pretty well too.
 
cobra said:
Nice video, well done! What software are you running on your touchscreen? Is that custom as well?
 
Software wrote by myself. I using only software origin from Leviton is PC Access.
 
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