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.

Comments

Pannel PCs

[Bryan Andersen]

As some others have mentiond, what you want is a pannel PC. These are embedded PCs that have a flatpannel for the screen, commonly also have a touch screen interface. They can be purchased with or without HD. Usually they have some sort of network connection. 10/100 twisted pair being the most common. Many manufacturers make em, but the prices can be a bit high in compairison to a regular PC. It's both a combination of low volume and that flat pannel display.

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.

use an embedded PC

[Zurk]

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.