Re: Fw: Re: Grand Designs tonight touchscreens.....

[Kevin Hawkins <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Recently I've been playing with both Crestron and AMX systems and one
thing I've learned is that they are ideally modelled on a touchscreen
control environment, (and so they should be at that price). What I mean
by that is that they attach to an embedded failsafe controller and they
respond instantly and provide immediate feedback and work 100%. Many
actions are handled locally on the screens (page flips, transitions,
button states) with only the things requiring external feedback or
control being processed via the controller.  The screen design
applications are really user friendly and powerful too.  The model they
use to link buttons to actions is also very well developed in terms of
device control suitability. Actually it's very similar to xAP BSC (Basic
Status and Control) which has been most reassuring as we developed that
before seeing this so we must be on the right track.

The main issue with web based interfaces has always been the lack of
real time feedback although great strides are now being made to achieve
this. When a 'click' causes an update it's not so much of an issue but
external events updating screens is more awkward without excessive
polling/refreshes.   Indeed xAP Floorplan now has AJAX based code to
provide near just such realtime response. You see a map of your house
(via a web browser) where lights turn ONOFF and can be conttrolled in
almost realtime.

<Teaser> What I think we UKHA'ers need is the equivalent as a
software
application , and I've been looking and playing with a number of things.
XLobby and MainLobby are only partial solutions here as they are
primarily single screen PC centric applications. XAP Desktop also serves
this quite well for enthusiasts and maybe a touchscreen focussed version
for high performance on even low power PC's even more so.  Wouldn't it
be nice though to have a something that offered  Crestron/AMX type touch
screen design / functionality with a layout and design application plus
controller engine as an affordable PC application..?  Couple this with
xAP BSC support and it would be really exciting..    (I hope) ...
Stay tuned, not quite there yet but not far away either.....

Kevin


Chris Purves wrote:

>What I have noticed is the increasing tendancy of devices to offer a
>web interface. As such I definitely think there is an advantage to a
>large touchscreen that can simply 'host' these views. Although its
>lovely to do custom stuff its certainly easier just to forward on
>these interfaces .... in my installation I have
>
>aircon web
>asterisk web
>russound sms music system web
>homeseer web
>weather web
>web web :)
>
>loads of other things I can't think of.
>
>Just a thought.
>
>C
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>--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, Kevin Hawkins <lists@u...> wrote:
>
>
>>Gareth Cook wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Easy enough to plumb one touchscreen as the main display onto a
>>>
>>>
>miniitx
>
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>>>system - but what if you want more ? Do we need display cards
that do
>>>multiple video outs or something ? I'm assuming I could just
use the
>>>homeseer web engine to drive buttons, etc. and that can talk
back to
>>>Comfort and CBUS.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>This is what RedRadio's RAD-I/O does - it divides a single screens
>>
>>
>'real
>
>
>>estate' into 8 sub  panels each of which drives a low cost screen
>>directly over CAT5 with power and video,which means all display is
at
>>full PC speed.  Touch screen feedback emulates a mouse click on
main PC
>>- there are a couple of restrictive aspects although not serious. 
1)
>>The 'touch' is shared across all screens, ie they fight for
contention
>>as there is only one mouse effectively and 2) the video card  has
to be
>>the main and only display screen on the PC.
>>
>>Kevin
>>
>>http://www.redradio.com/products/rad-io.html
>>
>>
>>
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