How to use Mediaportal with a touch screen (PC Monitor)

This shall be a collection of tips and tricks for all who want to use MP with a touch screen (a real external PC screen - not the ones build in to the PC case). I for example did build a 'kitchen music station', without mouse and keyboard. It provides: CD, radio, music from HD and weather ... that is it (running on a Atom barebone for $300).

Please don't start big discussions here. Just add tips, trick, hints and best practices.

thanks&regards
WeWe

Topbar always on ...

if you use a touchscreen you may want the topbar always to be on instead first to touch somewhere to make it appear:

- go to the directory of the skin you use
- edit topbar.xml and myhome.xml
- set <autohidetopbar>yes</autohidetopbar> to no

that's it

thanks+regards
WeWe

TouchIT

Okay, here is the ultimate touchscreen tool: Touch-It Virtual Keyboard. Fully customizable on screen keyboard

With TouchIT you can create whatever keys or buttons in whatever layout and design invoking whatever keystroke or command.

See the enclosed screenshot ...


Thanks&regardS
WeWe

Wow now thats cool. I´ve been looking for this for ages.

How do you back out of TV fullscreen?

I'm revisiting my kitchen touchscreen project and reinstalled the latest MP. Wow, I've got my HVR1800 working and after lots of frustration, even the program guide (partially).

Once I launch TV fullscreen, I'm dead. No way back out without keyboard. I can get the OSD (I think that's its) to display if I touch the bottom left. I tried adding a back button to that skin and it does appear but it doesn't do anything.

Best Skin for touchscreen

I would like to know which skin you're using with a touchsreen. With the "full" menu, it's not easy to select something because scrolling does not stop when I touch when at the top or bottom of the menu. I find Black and White and with the big icon, it's ok but when I choose the Plugin Menu, there is a "scrolling" not very suitable for a touchsreen. How do you manage that ?
Thanks for your help

Monochrome is one of the best suited skins to be used with a Touch Screen in my opinion! Ofcourse you should be running it with Basic Home screen as default...
Touch-It is a very great software as said before, to be used with a Touch Screen. Im also using this but with some small modifications...

I dont know if anybody is interested in this info but I'm using my Touch Screen only to navigate through the menues, listen to music, last.fm, view some trailers and so on... But when viewing movies Im using a projection screen.
The problem I had was that I wanted to use Clone Mode so i could use both screens... Because it was hard (and not user friendly) to exit MP, go into video settings, change output to projection screen and change resolution and THEN restart MP to have it executed when in Projection Screen Mode.
Because im using High Def with my projection screen and my Touch Screen only was supporting 1024x768 i could not use clone mode!

What i did was that i (with my ATI Catalyst Control Center) did TWO profiles.
#1: Touch Screen (with 1024x768 in resolution and with the Touch Screen output enabled)
#2: Projection Screen (with 1280x720p in resolution and with Projection Screen output enabled)

And with these two profiles i made two shortcuts on my desktop (possible throught the ATI software, probably possible with any video software today i think)
Im allways having these two shortcuts on my desktop because its very handy to just double click with my finger to change screen and resolution!

AND THEN....

I did use the Multishortcut plugin for MediaPortal to create TWO shortcuts in MediaPortals Plugin directory.
And with MediaPortal configuration window, i select (in plugins) those shortcuts and changed the application path to a .bat file i created (to execute TWO files with one file)
I created one "touchscreen.bat" and one "projectionscreen.bat"

In touchscreen.bat i wrote the following lines:
@echo off
start "" "C:\Program\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\restart.vbs"
start "" "C:\Program\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\CLI.exe" Start Load profilename="Touch Screen"

And in projectionscreen.bat i wrote:
@echo off
start "" "C:\Program\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\restart.vbs"
start "" "C:\Program\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\CLI.exe" Start Load profilename="Projection Screen"

This make it possible for me to change video output and resolution through MediaPortal in only one click. And when changing videoutput Mediaportal has to be restarted, and "restart.vbs" makes this possible!

I have one question though, is it possible to change the arrow sizes thats been used in music views and moving pictures for example? Because its quite hard to navigate using those tiny arrow buttons with a touch screen so i would like to resize them. Any tip about this i appreciated!

Anyway, great idea to having this thread wewe!

I'm using Blue3. I played around with the myhome.xml skin to add more buttons. I've also added a little custom code and a NoScroll setting that the menucontrol now uses to stop that scrolling action. Not perfect but it does the job.

Now if I could just figure out how to get a back button to work on those tv screens......

Hi Pussywagon,

Great information you're sharing! I'm trying for a couple of months to get my dual head htpc to work as I would . Still experimenting with turning on/off of my main TV screen and then loosing the cfg in CCC and find a way to solve it. Tried Ultramon, D-H160XT-C but still not found THE solution.

The description of you're configuration is comming very close to what I would like to accomplish as well. Is it possbile that you share more details (screen shots?), cfg of Touch IT, Multishortcut and restart.vbs?

tia /Johnnie

What exactly is it that you want to accomplish?

Here comes some screen shots of each configuration i have to make this "Switch function" to work...

From top left:
1: When creating a profile in ATI CCC you can choose on the third tab to execute an application when the profile loads. Here i choose the "restart.vbs" Which makes MediaPortal restart in a stable way.
2: The second tab is where you choose what kind of activation possibilitys to want to have. Do check the "Desktop Shortcut" because you are going to use this to show what attributes you are going to have in the .bat file. (In this case Start Load profilename= "Projector" is the attribute.
3: In the Team MediaPortal directory i did a SHORTCUT to the one i have on my desktop. I then created a Text-file, opened it and wrote what you see on picture nr3. The attributes you are going to use you will have if you Right Click on the shortcut on your desktop. I then renamed it to "projector.bat" (and this is the file executed through the Multishortcut in MP.
4: I then created TWO multishortcut files in Plugin/Windows/ directory named after the Profiles im using ("MS_" stands for MultiShortcut... DOH! )
Read this thread for more information about MultiShortcut: http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/plugins-47/multishortcut-plugin-execute-programs-home-menu-7425/
5: I then starting MP Configuration window, choosing Plugins. Then selecting the corresponding plugin "MS_Projector". Click "Config" and then put the destination to the .bat file you did in section 3.
6: This is how it looks in MediaPortal Plugins section, when selecting one of these MediaPortal will restart and change the resolution and video-output.

Next step will be to have a "Top Bar" but "Bottom Bar" instead... or some kind of shortcut that would be available through every menu so that you easily can switch between both screens. Dont know if im able to make it work, but i will give it a try someday. Any TIP is appreciated!

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!
PS: Sorry for my bad english... :sorry: