Touchscreen 7" LCD Configuration

[Giorgio_ap]

I use a touchscreen LCD 7" supplied with my case ZALMAN HD160XT and I would like to set up it as a second display to see status, start recording and so on...
I've tried different configuration under external displays plugins without success.
The interface of the display is USB (resistive serial, 4 wires) and the controller type is DTR-2U.

Is someone can help me.

Thanks.

Giorgio


MediaPortal Version: 0.2.2
MediaPortal Skin: BlueTwo
Windows Version: XP Pro SP2
CPU Type: Dual Core
HDD: Western Digital Sata II 400Go * 5
Memory: 2 Go
Motherboard: ASUS P5W Deluxe Home
Video Card: NVIDIA NX 7300GS
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card: Realtek audio integrated on mb
1. TV Card: Leadtek DTV2000H
HTPC Case: ZALMAN HD160XT
Cooling:
Power Supply: SENSONIC
Remote: VLSystem
TV: Philips
TV - HTPC Connection: S-Video
External Display: Digitech TouchScreen

[MJGraf]

Hi Giorgio and welcome to the forum!

As far as I know, the LCD in your case is connected via VGA. The USB should only be for the touch screen function. Please, any of the HD160 XT owners, correct me, if I'm wrong.

Unfortunately there isn't a really good solution for these kind of touch screens (yet). The best one I know is to use the clone mode of your graphics card driver. However, this requires that your main display uses the same resolution as your touch screen.

I tried to collect some possible solutions in this thread:

The Ultimate Touch-Screen-HTPC-Case-Thread

cheers,
Michael

[Giorgio_ap]

Thanks Michael for your quick reply.

You are right, the LCD is connected via VGA and USB is only for the touchscreen function.

Giorgio.

[cheetah05]

This may be on no use whatsoever because i am not toally sure of the features, but have you had a look at UltraMon (google it)

[kingboyk]

I also have just built an HTPC with this case, and I'll report my findings and what I think is needed to support solutions like this (not just the Zalman, but other similar cases, and I imagine they'll become more numerous as HTPC takes off). I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

The case comes with the following features and software which is relevant to MediaPortal/home theatre:
*A 7" LCD touch screen. Screen signal comes from VGA (second monitor on my Nvidia 7600 in my system); touch screen functionality is USB. Touch screen driver for Windows is independent of any application software and is basically a mouse with left click only (that I've discovered so far, anyway).
*A remote control
*2 temperature sensors, software controlled case fans
*Some truly awful software called MPlay Zini. The software handles the remote control and displays a graphic equaliser, system temperature, network traffic etc on the touch screen.

My journey so far:
*Touch screen works and, as above, is independent of MPlay Zini.
*I have the 7" screen set up as monitor 2 on my NVidia card. The supplied manual also gives details on how to do this with ATI cards.
*MPlay Zini is pretty useless. There seems to be no way of doing things like pausing the media player (WMP, Winamp etc), the graphic equaliser visualisation is dull and in any event doesn't work on my system, the system info doesn't include CPU temperature or motherboard temperature and sees only 2GB of my (just under) 3GB RAM which is visible to 32 bit Windows. This software can and should be ditched imho.
*Vista Media Center can be configured to display and startup on a specified screen; I have it display on the 7". If I click a media file in Explorer it opens in WMP; if I then minimise WMP, Media Center takes over. This works reasonably well, but it's a little fiddly on the touch screen and Vista Media Center seems a bit lacking to me.

And so enters MediaPortal. Looks pretty good at first glance. There's one big problem with the default skin, which is selecting an action from the main menu. It's damn near impossible to select Music or Videos or Settings or whatever because the menu scrolls. Remember I only have left click and the slow, imprecise response of a finger on a screen. (In fact, I find this quite difficult with a mouse too!). The software could be made just about usable with the Zalman if there was one simple change in the default skin: make the main menu optionally static, with scroll buttons to select the next page. If folks don't understand what I mean I can try to make a video showing the problem.

To be a really superb solution for the Zalman HD160, MediaPortal needs to do the following (in approximate order of difficulty) :
*Touch-screen friendly skin, as above. No fast scrolling, everything should be accessible with a left click. (It's possible such a thing already exists; I'll post a seperate thread asking about this).
*Recognise dual monitor (non cloned) setups, and have a configuration option for which monitor to load up on. Media Center can load full screen on the 7" when Windows starts, it would be great if MediaPortal could do the same. (Currently I have to drag and drop onto the second desktop).
*Have another option for which monitor to display video on. My dream is to have a media centre for music and control on the 7", and DVDs TV etc playing on the main monitor. Nail dual monitor support and it should be trivial.
*Getting harder, less important, but would be wonderful for us Zalman owners: support the remote control, temperature sensors and case fans natively, so we can bin MPlay Zini once and for all.

Link to a blog post about my HTPC to follow when I've written it

Steve

[Giorgio_ap]

Hello kingboyk,

I have a NVIDIA NX 7300GS and I have set it in dual mode.
MP start in full screen on the TV and I have the 7" screen set up as monitor 2 on my NVidia card, and It's work.

I use also Mkeys plugin in MP for the remote, to select quickly Music, Video... that I've remaped with Zini. (see attached file "MediaPortal.mpk" to store in "C:\Program Files\MPlay-ZiNi\MPK").

I don't use the mouse with MP anymore.

I have not all functions as MCE remote but the main functions.

Giorgio

[kingboyk]

Thank you Giorgio, I'll download that file and give it a try. Unfortunately I haven't even got as far as working out how to use the remote control yet , and I have a new amplifier (Yahama RX600ND) to learn too! I'll get there in the end I suppose.

[thematrixz]

Giorgio,

What screen resolution do you use on your touchscreen monitor?
This is what I found:

1280x768 mode: fonts and icons too small to touch accurately
800x600: not good, since it's a 4:3 format
960x600: icon size is good, but I have a small white bar on the bottom of the screen, about 2mm. Zalman support can't help.

[Giorgio_ap]

Hi thematrixz,

I use 800x600 on the touchscreen monitor as second monitor.

For the moment, the touch function is useless for me.

[SciDoctor]

There are two problems with small touch screen LCD's.

1... Native resolution and aspect ratio .

2... There are NO current dispaly driveers NV or AMD that have scalable clone modes (ie you are stuck with one, the lowest res of the two monitors)

As the TS LCD's are small you also need to have the ability to set the TS function to 'action on release' and not ''action on touch', as this will make finding the sweet spot on the panel for the actual function you require much easier.

Now because of the display driver 'problems' you have to set clone mode to the native res of the TS LCD, some have good scaling to slightly higher res and here trial and error is your best judge.

My TS LCD has an 16x9 AR and 1024x768 res, so I use the MP B2 wide skin to compensate and use a soft stylus to operate the TS.

My projector is forced to use a lowly 1024x768 res because of the clone mode limitation.

What could be ideal for a future MP development and work with extended desktop would be the MP GUI on the main screen (TS LCD) and all video content sent to the second extended screen (large screen dispaly PJ etc), all this would need is the coordinates of the second screen be used for displaying all video content as VMR9 and dx would do the rest for us.