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Re: [LUG] touchscreen support in linux

 

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Chronoppolis <chronicdee@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> So to my question for yee of greater knowledge - what sage is the
> linux interface support for touchscreen/pad at?
> And what about support for multi touch, i know there has been a huge
> hype about the iphone and macbook and asus (1000he i think) multi
> touch laptop keypads. but realistically these are relatively simple
> applications on the technology - a cutting egde example is Jeff Hans
> works 
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html.
> In any case multi touch relies on software that can use it as well,
> but i was wandering if there was a operating level support for this
> out there? perhaps not yet...
>

The touch screens i have used have been the Elo type used in POS type
systems. I was only using the older technology resistive type and
these interfaced via RS232 or USB without many problems into Linux.
Calibration of the device was a little fun as the documentation was
not the best, but after running the calibration program a few times
and some tweaking of the values what i ended up in the XOrg conf
<input> section worked perfectly and the device just appears as a
/dev/input/ device so mouse or touch screen *just* worked.

I'm guessing the multi touch ones are based on the acoustic system
rather than the the simple capacitive or resistive types that are very
common and older technology now and these *i think* would require a
driver decode so I'm not sure of the linux support here, probably best
checking out the top level manufactures website, these often have
driver and interfacing information and many have linux or general
examples on how to use them due to the wide and diverse range of
things these get placed in,

Robin

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