[Build] Touch Panels

[nils at shkoo.com]

I got the netboot image working to automatically start X windows and 
enable the touch screen.

Of the three laptops set up on the table, here is the status of each:

Left one, IBM laptop:

Display seems to work OK.  Touchscreen does not supply any serial data. 
Unknown reason.  Suspect problem with touchscreen.

Middle one, dell laptop:

When external VGA cable is plugged in, it doesn't seem to display 
anything on the internal LCD nor on the external touchscreen.  When the 
external VGA cable is unplugged, displays X windows on internal LCD but 
allows external touchscreen for navigation.

Right one, toshiba laptop:

Display works ok, touch functionality works ok.  A little jittery; seems 
to like to return to the upper left corner upon touch release.

-nils

On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 nils at shkoo.com wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Sep 2009, Zedd Epstein wrote:
>> I have 4 laptops net booting, with touch screens connected to them. Video
>> works, net boot works, touching them doesn't work. I'm using the usb to
>> serial adapters that nils bought. Any guesses?
>
> Hi,
>
> They do not work automatically upon bootup yet.  Manual intervention is
> still required to get them to work after bootup.  I'll be at 2169 tomorrow
> and I'll work on polishing.
>
> If you have a spare windows box we could reverse engineer the driver on
> that would be super helpful, or if you want to do it yourself by going to
> the www.inexio.co.uk website.  It would be nice to upgrade the firmware if
> there's some way to do that, since I think it was a firmware problem that
> was causing the glitchy cursor.  But it would be nice to compare and
> contrast how well the windows driver works.
>
> There are two methods of setting up the drivers for the touchscreen. I've
> gotten movement to work with both methods.  Producing a button-down event
> from touching the screen works under some conditions with the 1st method
> ("evtouch" with the kernel module), but I haven't gotten it to work at all
> with the second ("xf86-input-inexio").
>
> On the "s1" server, /netboot/config contains the debian live config tree
> for building netboot images.  Running /netboot/build.sh builds and
> installs a debian live image based on that config tree.  Subsequent to
> running build.sh, anything netbooting off of s1 will get the new image.
> (And anything currently netbooted off of s1 will likely get confused).
>
> /netboot/config is managed with mercurial, so if you change it please
> commit oyur changes with an appropriate email address and comment so
> anyone who's working on it knows what's going on.
>
> You can use "lh_config" and friends to add/change /netboot/config, but I
> find it easier to just edit the files manually.
>
> Anyways, there are two touchscreen drivers that get included in the image:
>
> 1) "evtouch", which takes input from the linux "inexio" kernel driver.
>    Here are the steps to use this driver after booting up:
>
> a. Copy s1:/srv/debian-live/inexio-module onto the netboot client (I
> forget where it's mounted) and build "inexio.ko" and the custom version of
> "inputattach".
>
> b. insmod inexio.ko
>
> c. use the custom inputattach to "inputattach --inexio /dev/ttyUSB0" to point the kernel driver at the right serial device
>
> d. Use /etc/X11/xorg.conf.new (which may require some hacking; I'm not sure I've gotten everything right there) to start
> x-windows
>
> 2) "xf86-input-inexio", which is a X-windows input driver that reads
> directly from serial. Here are the steps to use this driver:
>
> a. The xf86-input-inexio package should be already installed; if not, copy
> s1:/srv/debian-live/xf86-input-inexio and build it on the netboot client.
>
> b. Edit the x11 config as shown in "man 4 inexio". You will want to use
> /dev/ttyUSB0 to use the rs232 to usb adapter.
>
> Otherwise I'll be in tomorrow to attempt to get the netbooting to
> automatically touchscreenize seamlessly.
>
> -nils
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