Re: Touchscreen controller early prototype

["Frank Mc Alinden" <frankmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martyn

An interesting Project.....What application software do i need to watch the
video???
Thanks
Frank

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martyn Wendon" <martynwendon@xxxxxxx>
To: <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 6:41 AM
Subject: [ukha_d] Touchscreen controller early prototype


> Just because I'm feeling proud that I managed to make something
electronic
> that actually works, I thought I'd post to the list about a
touchscreen
> controller that I'm working on!
>
> I really liked the concept of the Marmitek X10 RF touchscreen
controller
> mentioned on the list a while ago, but at nearly £200 it was a
bit
> expensive
> and at 10" in size it was a bit big for what I wanted.  Something
around
> 7"
> * 4" would be more appropriate - I was thinking of something that
could be
> mounted next to a light switch and not look too monstrous.
>
> So in the spirit of UKHA I set about a homebrew solution.
>
> I already make extensive use of HomeEasy RF equipment with the
excellent
> RFXCom units and XPLRFX and have a glut of the HE300 remote control
units
> going to waste, so a quick bit of butchering later and some
rudimentary
> testing with a multimeter and I saw that it would be fairly easy to
> manipulate the inputs of one of these to give up to 34 usable XPL
messages
> (the HE300 has 16 "switch" on/off commands and a
"group" on/off).
>
> I recently modified an Asus EEE PC with a cheap 7" touchscreen
overlay
> from
> Hong Kong (about £20) and had a spare overlay in the parts bin
too and
> mimicking the idea of the Marmitek, I wanted to be able to print out a
> sheet
> of buttons, controls, etc and have the touchscreen on top.
>
> Having a small amount of experience in microcontrollers like arduinos
and
> PICs I knew that it would be pretty easy to control the HE300 side of
> things
> with some digital outputs via opto-isolators and suspected that an
> appropriate microcontroller should also be able to interface directly
to
> the
> 4-wire resistive touchscreen as well (bypassing the USB controller
that
> came
> with it).
>
> After some considerable googling, some rubbish soldering and using far
too
> many jump-wires, I have a prototype up and running!  At the moment the
> code
> on the arduino simply listens for a "touch" in one half of
the screen to
> send an "on" command for one of the HomeEasy switch
addresses and a touch
> in
> the other half of the screen to send an "off" command for
the same
> address.
> Eventually I'll divide the touch area up into zones for each of the 34
> possible combinations.
>
> The next prototype will hopefully be mounted in something photo frame
> styled
> and will move to breadboard & soldered components to reduce the
size of
> the
> electronics.
>
> I've uploaded a rather poor mobile phone video at
> http://www.aceshigh.net/touchcontroller.mp4
for anybody that wants to take
> a
> look!
>
>
> Martyn
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>



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