Using touch-screen as secondary display to show information and to control MP. (1 Viewer)

[AtomAnt]

Greetings.

First of all, sorry if i do anything wrong, but i'm new to forums and also am new to MediaPortal. So to get to the point, i would like to know if it was possible to use a secondary touch-screen display with MediaPortal to display information and to control MediaPortal. What i am talking about is something like iMon's Touch LCD screen. I already have a HTPC and -of course- it has no touch screen mounted on it, but i am wonderig if i could get a 7" screen, connect it to my graphic card's VGA output, connect the touch-part to USB (which basicly is like an usb mouse as far as i know) and use it with MediaPortal. It would have 2 advantages: first, i wouldn't have to turn on my "big" TV screen only to listen to mp3 or to get weather information or such, and second, it would look and feel very nice. I contacted SoundGraph and asked them if it was possible to get an iMon LCD screen from them but it was a no-go, and i do not wish to spend more money on getting a case with a built-in screen than what i have spent on my whole HTPC altogether, especially since i already have a case.
Also, simply using desktop cloning wouldn't work since i want to use my primary display in its native resolution which is 1920x1080 and there aren't too many small LCD screens that would support that resolution (frankly i haven't found any yet).

 

[JackONeill]

not possible with windows itself...

what you can do is e.g. use UltraVNC... and clone and scale the Main window.. but to honest I never tried it..

Under Linux X11 would be the solution.. ;-)

A problem will also be the bi-directional communication between the remote display and MP ...

so you see it will be hard... but as a hint ... have a look at tversity.com

with that one .. and if it is only for listening to music and maybe some videos ... it works great with evrey browser and client..

Regards Jack

 

[AtomAnt]

Hmm, using a VNC...that's not a bad idea...but i wonder if it would allow to run the server and the client on the same system...dual monitor or not.... Maybe i could try to write a little program that takes screenshots like 10 times a second and displays them on the secondary display and also submits mouseclicks towards the first display, scaling the resolution both ways. I wonder how that would work...maybe it would be too resource consuming, also it would pose problems if MP uses overlays...it might be worth a try...but then again, stretching down from 1920x1080 to something like 800x600 might produce a less useable result.

Thanks for the idea, Jack

 

[Slurm]

There is a plugin that does what you want: Touchscreen LCD display Plugin

 

[AtomAnt]

Thank you very much Jack and Slurm, now that i know it is possible i will go for a display (didn't want to spend money on one before being sure Mediaportal has this possibility). Once i have one, i will install the plugin and try it out. Thanks again...

 

[AtomAnt]

Ok, i tried the plugin yesterday, true, that i do not have a touch screen yet, but i set up a secondary display (actually it is the same display, but it has both DVI and VGA inputs and i connected both and set up dual-desktop using nVidia's control panel, it works in windows, from the point of the OS i have 2 monitors connected) and disabled "Touch functionality". When i run MP, it crashes and does so until i disable the plugin again. I set the "secondary monitor" to run at 1024x768, 32bits color depth. I thought i could check out what the plugin displays this way. Am i doing something wrong? I tried to install the plugin using the MPInstaller but it told me the ZIP was invalid (or something like that), so i simply extracted the DLL to MP's Plugins/Process directory (or so), then ran the config utility, enabled the plugin, disabled the Touch functionality and then runned MP...crash. Any comments?

 

[Slurm]

Can you provide logs when it crashes?

 

[Ruud]

Hi,
I am using a 7" touchscreen, have a hardware splitter because my videao card did not have the possibility to have 2 monitors connected.
I am sure that the resolution of my 7" is not equal (less) then my TV which is 1360x768 but it scales automatically to fit the screen.
True, on a larger screen this would result in unsharp picture quality, but looking at the small size of the lCD it looks as sharp as on my 32" TV that natively supports this resolution.
You should look at the specs and search for max resolutions (e.g. not max pixels supported)

b.t.w. I use monochrome skin because it is very touchscreen and GPU/CPU friendly.

good luck.

gr.
Ruud.

My setup

 

[AtomAnt]

Thanks for your replies. I enabled the plugin again to make logs and upload them, and presto, it didn't crash. I guess i either did something differently this time or it's one of those things that don't happen once you want to show them.

Ruud: Do i see right that your case is cutom built? Where did you get the 7" display and do you use VGA or S-VIDEO (or other interface) for the conneciton? I've been looking at the market for a nice 7" touch screen with VGA on it but didn't find any yet that i would like. Or does this question belong to a different thread? I wish Soundgraph would sell their iMon LCDs separately too...

 

[Ruud]

AtomAnt,

just went up the attic to find the box. Its probably imported from china, type number is: XDXP070Z, these are the specs:

7 inches headrest/desktop car TFT-LCD monitor with touch screen for car PC
Specifications:
Display size: 7.0 inches (16:9), screen: New digital Innolux TFT-LCD
Physical resolution: 800 x 480 RGB, highest resolution: 1024 x 768 formatted
Visual angle: 40(l), 30(u), brightness: 400 , contrast: 250
AV chromatic system: PAL/NTSC (auto switch)
Working power: 11.5V to 13V DC (900mA), electronic consumption: <10W
Operation temperature: -20 to 60 degrees Celsius
Features:
Four wires resistive touch-screen interface (USB port)
Standard VGA input (15 pin D-SUB ) can match with PC, GPS and security systems
Two RCA video input can match with VCD, DVD and camera
Touch-screen for PC display (optional)
PC operation system: Windows XP, CE/UNIX, ME and 2000
Accessories:
Remote controller, English instruction manual, one bracket, one CD disc for drive, one touch pen and cables

Note that although it says highest resolution = 1024*768 I use it at 1360*768 and it works!
I think the highest resolution they give is a strange resolution because this is not 16:9 as is the screen....

I feed it from my ITX board with 12v, that way the screen switches of with switching of the PC.

Got it for about € 200,- should be cheaper currently.

Regards,
Ruud.