Possible to use multiple Touchscreens?

[WannaTheater]

I vaguely remember reading an article about using multiple touchscreens with XLobby. As I am in process of a "redesign," I am trying to determine the best way for multiroom control.

My current system (work in progress) is:
1) HTPC with dual head video card: 1st Video output goes to video splitter which feeds 4 rooms. Second video output goes to standard 17" monitor which is where XLobby interface resides (controlled by wireless mouse and keyboard). I am looking to replace monitor and kbyd/mouse with touchscreen. Recommendations would be appreciated (10-15 inch)

Since this touchscreen "control panel" will be about 30 feet from the HTPC, I have been researching VGA and USB over CAT5e for cabling. And I started to think, wouldn't it be nice to be able to drive the HTPC from several touchscreens? Is this possible? If so, what hardware would be required?

Again, this is basically driving the XL server with multiple remote wired touchscreens, nothing thin client. Unless someone is using thin client in multiple rooms with great success, and can recommend appropriate hardware, etc. My experiences with Dell Axim as thin client have been suitable, but as mentined in previous posts is fairly slow, often hangs if you go too fast, problem with repaints, etc.

Thanks!

[vaporhat]

I have multiple 15" LCD ELo touchscreen connected to my HTPC running XL from one port of the graphics card (1024x768) and the other port going to a front projection (1280 x 720). The projection is only used for movie viewing.

The touchscreen monitors are all driven at the same resolution and the display is a clone. I can have up to 8 LCD screens on my system. I use a cat5-> VGA extender and a cat5-> RS232 for control. I suppose this can be substituted for USB if you wanted although extending RS232 is much less expensive $0.51 an end.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2

This is the extender I have, it also sends audio if needed, I however don't use functionality in my system.

http://www.kvms.com/products/VOPEX-C5VA-4.asp

If you decided to go this path I have a number of the remote units for sale at a drastic discount Part #: ST-C5VA-R-600. i do not have any spare extenders.

[jji666]

I have thin clients running off of dual airpanels (V110p) and this is a pretty nice solution, and wireless too. Yes, there is a bit of a delay running the thin clients wirelessly but it really isn't too bad, especially for the quality of the graphic presentation you get. And this is a serious gee whiz factor with my friends. I also have one thin client running off a wired network connection and this one has no delay, or at least it is not noticeable at all.

[muzz]

I have thin clients running off of dual airpanels (V110p) and this is a pretty nice solution, and wireless too. Yes, there is a bit of a delay running the thin clients wirelessly but it really isn't too bad, especially for the quality of the graphic presentation you get. And this is a serious gee whiz factor with my friends. I also have one thin client running off a wired network connection and this one has no delay, or at least it is not noticeable at all.

I have a V110p too, and run the fat client from it. I also want to add a couple of wired touchscreens, I've tried the thin clients but the delay is as bad as it is with the Airpanel.

What did you use for you thin client settings to get rid of the delay? I think I use my machine name, Mediaserver, although thinking about it maybe I should be using localhost

[WannaTheater]

Thanks for the replys:

So jji666, do you ever have problems with the thin client locking up?

And muzz, can you explain how you are running XLobby as a fat client? Are you remote desktoping into server machine and running XLobby client application (where XLobby is already running as a server)?

The reason I ask is because I am torn between trying to get a solution to work with an Airpanel, or go straight with wired VGA touchscreen. Airpanels seem to be easy to come by, but I am pretty sure the majority of batteries will have already lived past there useful life, and I haven't been able to find any replacement batteries for these. So if I go that route, I want to be sure it will work well.

thanks!

[PhilB]

I have run FAT clients, wireless and wired touch. I far prefer the wired touch solution for speed and worry free operation (instant on/off).

I use a Kramer VGA amp to split and amplify the VGA signal to two touchscreens, one upstairs and one down. I am sure that Calrad must have something similar.

PB

[scottw]

I run a 10" touchscreen off the main server (which is connected to my TV) connected to a dual head card, one going to the TS and one to the TV. I run the thin client on the TS because I wanted it to be independent from the TV. This way you can watch a movie on the TV using a remote (in the other room) and control the music via the TS without disturbing the movie. I have the thin client set to "refresh:1000" and don't notice a lag at all.

I would love to find a way to run multiple copies of XL on one machine instead of having to have a computer connected to each TS if I want to expand.

As far as I know it you can hook multiple TS's:

1) to a single machine and just mirror/clone the display but there is no independence with this setup meaning whatever is on one screen is on all screens.

2) Same as #1 but run thin client on the TS connected to the same machine. I read somewhere that you can only have one thin client per PC though.

3) Airpanel's hooked up to a single PC using the multi-user XP hack. Not sure how many you can hook up with this.

4)Have a computer (or tablet pc) hooked up to each TS. You have independence but the overhead of multiple PC's.

This is what my knowledge is of this which may be totally wrong, so please correct me if I am Also if there are other options please let me know since I may be expanding my setup at some point or another.

Hope this helps

[PhilB]

related to you #1, some video cards will allow you to extend the desktop. I do this so that I can run a movie on the 2nd desktop (at high resolution) and leave XL on the 1st at standard resolution. There may be a way to use multiple video cards to accomplish similar.

[scottw]

related to you #1, some video cards will allow you to extend the desktop. I do this so that I can run a movie on the 2nd desktop (at high resolution) and leave XL on the 1st at standard resolution. There may be a way to use multiple video cards to accomplish similar.

Cool thanks Phil.

Just as a side note, it's cool to hear how other people have their system setup....it gives others great ideas for their own setup.

[wesblack]

Calrad has several VGA distribution amplifiers. You can hookup multiple touch screens to a single xLobby using either a USB or RS232 style touch screen.

40-822-400, 2 Port, 400mhz VGA Distribution Amplifier
40-824-400, 4 Port, 400mhz VGA Distribution Amplifier
40-828-400, 8 Port, 400mhz VGA Distribution Amplifier

40-UE04H, 4 port USB hub over Cat5e.

Wes Black \ Calrad

[muzz]

Thanks for the replys:

So jji666, do you ever have problems with the thin client locking up?

And muzz, can you explain how you are running XLobby as a fat client? Are you remote desktoping into server machine and running XLobby client application (where XLobby is already running as a server)?

The reason I ask is because I am torn between trying to get a solution to work with an Airpanel, or go straight with wired VGA touchscreen. Airpanels seem to be easy to come by, but I am pretty sure the majority of batteries will have already lived past there useful life, and I haven't been able to find any replacement batteries for these. So if I go that route, I want to be sure it will work well.

thanks!

Hi jji666, I'm in the same boat, I have one Airpanel but would like to also run 2 wired touchscreens. Here is how I plan to do it...

My LCD displays around my house & my projector all come from the main VGA out from my PC on user "Main". This runs TVedia and I control it via a RF remote (ATI Remote Wonder Plus). The Airpanel is connected into the same PC via the multiple user RDP hack, on user "Mediaserver" it runs XLobby fat client at 800x600. Xlobby does all my video switching, audio switching and volume control of my Russound CAV system, ir control of devices (Cable Box, DAB Tuner) and audio playback / IP radio from Winamp, all movie stuff is done through TVedia with the RF remote (much like Windows Media Center)

If I put the main VGA out of the PC on extended desktop (user "main"), I can put TVedia on the main output, and a copy of XLobby on the second screen. This second output works as a touchscreen when connected to one wired ELO. I'm waiting on a second one arriving to see if two work off the same VGA feed, but having used ELO touchscreens before I'm quite confident they will work, as long as they are on different COM ports

Now the only thing is I was thinking was that I will need a second copy of XLobby to run the second touchscreen, but I would much rather just use a thin clent. However even on the wired touchscreen, the delay is at least a second between pressing a button and it happening, which is even slower than the slow-speed wirelessly connected Airpanel!

[jji666]

I'll try to respond to the myriad of issues brought up from the posts above:

(1) I don't see much delay at all running my wired touchscreen that runs off of the thin client on a separate PC -- less than 1/2 second. Maybe we have different tolerances for delays, but honestly I don't see any objectionable delay off of the wired thin client. True it is not the same super-instant response as the fat client directly on the HTPC but by no means does it really impact the quality of the experience in controlling the system.

(2) Multiple thin clients using the XP RDP hack was problematic for me. The RDP hack was useful so that I could still access my main user desktop and run ONE thin client off each XP computer I have, but when I had multiple logins on a single machine supporting a thin client and then going to each of two airpanels, the thin clients on the same machine appeared to be mirroring each other but in an erratic fashion. I guess it is possible I screwed up and logged them into the same user, but I don't think so. I'll try again and confirm this, but my basic thought is that you probably only want one thin client per PC. I have no trouble running one fat (XL server) and one thin client on the same PC under different logins with the XP hack. Someone suggested running various virual machines on one PC to support multiple thin clients, which might work, but I didn't pursue that very far before it looked like I had to get a copy of Server 2003 and I decided against dealing with that for now.

(3) There is a delay on a button push on the wireless airpanels with the thin client. Maybe 1/2 to 1.5 seconds depending on the command. Given my lack of perceived delay on the wired thin client, I just assumed this was the wifi requiring time to send data and graphics to the wireless device and also the crappy graphics processor in the airpanels taking their sweet time repainting the desktop. But although this isn't as fast as the wired thin client, it is still acceptable to me. Again perhaps I am just so impressed with myself for building this whole thing, but I know my friends love the airpanels when they are over DJing music vids. I'd bet that going through the buttons and graphics and reducing the resolution on various items would improve performance, but I haven't had time to do that. In any case it works reasonably well. They seem to send commands instantly to zoomplayer, and it is the whole screen repaint that takes most of the time.

(4) Airpanel V110p's are selling for $90 off ebay right now, which is dirt cheap for something this sophisticated, if you have the XP machines to support them. The batteries in the ones I got will hold about a 3 hour charge. This isn't bad if you just remember to put them back in their docking stations after you start the movie. Or rotate them every hour if you have two.

(5) I've had both the fat and thin clients freeze up on me occasionally. Once every two weeks maybe. This affects the WAF but the best I can suggest is configuring the boot-up so that it automatically loads all the right software when you reboot so that the wife doesn't have to navigate anything but the touch screen interfacce, even if she has to reboot. This hasn't been a big problem and usually the freeze is at the XL server level rather than at the thin client. Haven't figured out why yet. I will blame PowerDVD or Daemontools until I prove otherwise.

(6) I think the main issue with running multiple touchscreens off of one server using dual displays is that although you can propogate the control to multiple devices, they will all be lock-step regarding what is displayed. That means that someone could be looking at a display and seeing the navigating done elsewhere as though a ghost is controlling it. I far prefer the independent navigation afforded by multiple thin clients. This way people can be looking at or queueing up only what interests them. Depends on how you would use it.

Have fun! Remember this is supposed to be fun...

[WannaTheater]

Thanks for the great summary. Your summary is exactly what I have been seeing. I don't have any airpanels, but I have simulated such with just a wireless PC as a thin client. Most of my control over the past year has been with handheld Dell Axim PPC. Same problem with the WAF - if you push buttons too fast, things lock up. I am using Zoomplayer, and no daemon tools, so that should give you a bit more ammo on XL locking things up.

[jji666]

I also use an IR remote via USB-UIRT for the media transport controls. Although I do have an overlay that has all the zoomplayer buttons, I typically use the remote. Trying to input a rapid succession of commands for transport control may be what locks up the thin client. Since I generally don't use it that way, I have never seen it.

[WannaTheater]

Just out of curiousity, which remote? And you are bypassing XLobby control of mediaplayer? Perhaps going directly through Girder or Eventghost?

... just trying to make sure I understand how it all fits together