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In-Wall Touchscreens for the Home?
Black Perl asks: "I am planning a home automation (HA) system for a new yet-to-be-built house, and would like to have in-wall touchscreens in key areas around the house. However, the touchscreens in current HA products have ugly interfaces. Being a web developer, I know I could do a much better job if these ran web browsers in kiosk mode. Problem is, how can I accomplish that? Embed a PC in the wall next to the screen? Are there ways to extend video+input cables down to a rack in the basement? Any other ideas?" Interesting idea, and more aesthetically pleasing than the more traditional alternatives. Maybe some of the solutions, mentioned in this earlier question on LCD screens, may be a step in the right direction.
I hope to build a fast, portable remote-UI system to use on such systems. It will run on DOS, Linux and Macintosh at least; maybe the Palm too. If I get it done some day, there will probably be a link to it here.
Speaking of Palms... they are a better alternative to the GameBoy someone else mentioned, IMO. Old ones can be cheap on ebay; and they have a real touchscreen.
Of course, use an iButton to securely store login credentials.
these? They fit in a single outlet box and are pretty easy to hook up. With correct UI design, they should be able to do the job and not cost too much ($200 for the one with an LCD and $100 for the one with buttons only).
If not (i.e. it is a collection of controls...) then I wonder if you could build/buy a prototype of what the people at the AT&T labs in cambridge use: a 'bat' which allows you to point and click anywhere.
OK, so you need some ultrasound receivers and some funky software, but you did ask slashdot, right?
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned PDAs or HPCs Yet -- Depending on the capabilitied you want, you could pick up a greyscale WinCE Clamshell for under 50 bucks and hack it up a bit to make a 640x240 touch panel using a Web browerser over ethernet, or if you demand more capabilities, you could go with a few ePods (colour, fast, etc) for a few hundred USD each.
Running Pocket Internet Exploiter and conneted to ethernet or even serial/ppp, you could do it quite well.
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Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Interesting. I was aware of ClearCube's product line, where they have rack-mount PCs and a patented method of putting KVM and audio over cat5 cable, but I didn't know about the cybex product.
bp
Yes, I was thinking about doing the X-Terminal thing. I could use Flash ROM to store a minimal OS and a browser.
bp
Here's what I have in mind:
- Total light control from a map of the house. This is far more intuitive than a big row of buttons labeled "hall light 1", "hall light 2", "Bedroom #2 light", etc.
- A general-purpose info screen with weather, temperature, email status, perhaps even things like top news, etc. Like a specialized portal.
- The ability to browse an audio library, choose an audio source, and choose the room(s) in which to play it. Preferably allowing more than one source at a time to be playing in different rooms. And control one of these. I haven't looked into it yet, probably needs some sort of massive multiplexer in the central data closet.
- The ability to choose a video source (i.e. from the front porch camera) and display it on the panel.
Now, if I want to do the above, do I have any other alternative than a PC touchscreen?bp
When you select one, don't go for super high speed CPU. As you will be mounting it in the wall, where will the heat go? Mounting a small low speed fan, blowing up, below the unit in the wall cavity can do wonders for cooling the unit even though it dosen't draw any air from outside the wall cavity. It will better distribute the heat up and down the wall cavity making a better heat sink.
In addition to the currently available industrial and home pad/tablet computers, are older and discontinued ones which can be used as terminals. Even a 386 or 486 device can deal with Lynx or TinyX -- or old Netscape on MS-WfW. The hard part is having a touchscreen which your O/S can listen to.
Do some web searches for "pad computers", "tablet computers", and "pen computers" (many pen computers have finger-sensitive touchscreens).
This PL-300 may be your solution. Its usually used for digital projectors and transmits several remotely or locally, SWITCHABLE video and audio signals from the transmitter to the receiver via CAT-5(b) cable. Also it has an bi-directionall RS-232 port on both receiver and transimtter, so you can interact with the display or sources. It can be connected to any AV controller board that uses RS-232. I have used these extensively and found them to be very good products.
Also, anytime i need to do some funky/custom cabling switching etc... Extron has been a good source for cables and distribution amps.
When you get your project dialed in, let us all know how you did it!
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
There really isn't a good (as in fully satisfying) answer to your question.
I don't know why, but no one has yet seen fit to produce what you're looking for - I've been looking for several years for the same thing.
One option is some of the Internet-enabled "web phones" - I have several of the ones Philips ad Lucent built a few years ago, but never released. They're potentially impressive ARM CPU, VGA color touchscreen, PCMCIA slots, wireless IR keyboard, nice speakerphone, cool case, etc., but hobbled by running Inferno. It should be possible to put Linux on them, but I haven't had the time to really try. I still have several if you're interested, but we forewarned the hack will take some effort unless you're already an ARM wizard.
Other options include the ePods One, which is sort of like what you're looking for, but runs only CE right now, so it's not much better - and there's no kiosk mode in the dain-bramaged CE version of IE.
Sorry, but there's just no acceptable solution to this at the moment...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
use one of the embedded PC designs on this page and integrate the ZF86 chip into a touchscreen. no need for anything else - just use a 16MB on board flash to boot linux and the ZF is a 486 compatible CPU. run mozilla/netscape/etc and youre all set.
First off, ask yourself - is there really a need for a large, graphical touchscreen for most applications? You probably won't be surfing the web standing in the hallway, and the only reason you would want large graphics would be for artwork or something - and unless you are willing to spend >$1000 per panel, you won't be getting a really large and clear display anyhow.
What to do, what to do...?
Go here - and hook yourself up with some low cost (compared to LCD touch panels, that is) LCD displays and keypads from Matrix Orbital. They are cheap, low power, small, easy to program and communicate with (via a serial cable - which makes the basement server idea an easy possibility - provided you use a multiport board or something), backlit - some have graphics even! You can use everything from a 12 key keypad to a full AT keyboard on select modules.
Some of the smaller ones would easily mount in a 4 way electrical box, making installation a breeze. Run some DC power and a serial cable (using CAT3 or something), and you're set.
Most applications don't need more than the 12 key (heck, many need less) - think temperature control, stereo control, light control - simple apps that could be automated. With the larger text LCDs and mini AT keyboards, your could do simple email terminals, kitchen recipe terminals, perhaps even a funky Lynx web browser!
For anything else (security cams, quick web browsing), run that data to custom entertainment PCs next to the TV.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Unless you're looking at home automation systems from the 1980s, I don't think they're too ugly. I use a Crestron Isys TPS4500L controller in my home... it has a pretty nice interface. Check out the Crestron website -- http://www.crestron.com
The entire Crestron setup is very Windows-centric, but I feel it was worthwhile. Not as simple, but much more expandable than what I used to use (a custom HyperCard stack running on a Mac Plus interfaced to an X10 transmitter).
CYBEX makes what they call the long view. (http://www.cybex.com/index3.htm) It is a KVM Extender. All you need to do is plug in the PC in to the PC box plug the keyboard, video, and Mouse in to the other box. Plug them together with a patch cable. Power can be plug into ether one of the boxes to power both boxes and you are done. I have used them many times and they work very well.
I think that the current best solution is probably not to have extra-long video cables to the basement.
Try getting a PC/104 or other sort of single-board computer from a place like EMJ Embedded. You should be able to find one that's small enough to fit in a small box, inexpensive, and beefy enough to run Linux. And then put a nice LCD screen and whatever perepherals you want with it.
The people at OpenHardware have some stuff in the works that would be cheaper than any of the single-board computers -- Like the EZ328LCD Terminal, except that you'd end up building it yourself.
This will be more light switch box sized and cheaper than the flat panel computers from ZF Micro Devices, which is also an option already mentioned.
In any case, you can then just string power and ethernet and run things remotely. This works especially well if there is a X server that will work with your display.
Gentoo Sucks
How about hacking a cartridge for a Nintendo game boy to interface with your HA system. It wouldn't be a touch screen, but it would have color & sound and perhaps would be cheaper. It would also have a well built yet simple interface. It is also roughly the size of a standard switch plate which is where I would put it. The only problem I see if developing the cartridge with a custom interface and making it communicate with your HA system. Dale
It would be nice to have a small web browser with a touchscreen for navigation. I ended up using a LCD/touchscreen I got from smarthome.com and replacing the PIC processor. It uses a RS-232 link to a PC-104 386 class processor that runs the network. Color would be nice but even greyscale would be an improvement. The unit I used mounts onto a double wide outlet box, a picture here.
Broadly speaking, it sounds like you have 3 options. 1. Get really long cables. Benefit is that it's cheap. The downside is you might get problems with attentuation of video and mouse signals depending on the distance the cables have to reach. 2. Embed a PC into the wall. There are plenty of companies out there who make really small PC's (and I don't mean laptops). Benefits are that you get dedicated processing power at each point and there are no problems with attentuation. UTP copper can go as far as 100 metres (not sure what that is in feet - I live in the real world) and fibre can go as far as 2000 metres. The downside is that this is a really expensive option. 3. Install a web-based terminal into the wall. These are even smaller than PC's and are generally cheaper. Sometimes they have an embedded OS such as Linux or WindowsCE. Others just send video and keyboard/mouse signal via the network. For your application you don't need raw processing power at each point - so why pay for it! I don't like to drop names but Compaq and Wise have terminals which cater for both religions - Microsoft and Unix. Both can be configured to just have the browser on screen at power-up. In my humble opinion, this is the best option for your application.