Talk:Peripherals/Touch Screen
Just wanted to know if anyone is looking into replacing OLPC display with a touch screen panel, or maybe adding a touch screen plastic film to the existing display. I'm having a hard time finding some company that manufactures 7,5" touch screen panels. If you know something, please contact me. --(cosimo (at) cpan (dot) org)
- I'm not sure why you would want to replace Jepson's innovative screen with a touch screen, you'd certainly lose some power consumption advantage. You can find directions to map mouse/keyboard functions to the buttons available on an XO when in e-book mode, which is a step towards what I imageine you are looking for. To modify an asus-eee-pc to add a touch-screen, see here. Cjl 18:13, 19 May 2008 (EDT)
Right now I'm looking for plastic film solutions, that let you use the same built-in screen while having touch screen functionality. The reason is that I want to write educational/fun software for my kids, and they don't understand mouse or keyboard yet. Touch is more direct and removes the "interface" factor. What you touch is what you mean. --Cosimo
Still no new information about touch screen OLPC modding. Too bad. Anyway, action! I just bought a cheap resistive touch panel to be applied on the OLPC display. I should get it by next week. I will keep you posted. --Cosimo, 20 Jul 2008.
UPDATE (Dec, 8th 2008):
Some of you asked for more information and/or clarifications. There you go: in short, it was a failure. I bought this resistive touch panel (not just the film). I'm not really expert in modding, but the OLPC has so little empty spaces :) that it wasn't possible for me to fit this panel, not even mentioning the usb controller, inside it...
I also managed to break the touch panel while trying to fit it into the OLPC chassis. The main problem is that it seems so difficult to find a 7,5" panel/film with the exact size of the OLPC screen. In my case, the panel was slightly larger. I had to remove the "joypad" buttons to install it, but even doing that, there is simply not enough space.
However... good news is that before breaking it, I managed to connect the touch panel and the usb controller (on the external connector), and actually use it. I tried to install several versions of different drivers, and my model worked with the {{{eGalax}}} touchscreen driver "kit".
So, yes! it's possible to attach and use a touch panel (maybe also film?) on the OLPC, but I wasn't able to find a perfect matching panel for the screen size. And I wasn't able to actually install it inside the OLPC.
To all trying to do the same: please contact me to share your experiences. I didn't surrender. If you have any news, particularly about touch films at this point, I would really be interested in hearing from you! I'm still convinced the OLPC is a great machine, it just NEEDS a touch screen. --Cosimo, 8th Dec 2008.
