Just Uber

So, you’ve got a touchscreen monitor and you’re wondering why it doesn’t work properly? Lets see if we can get it up and running!

After connecting the touchscreen monitor’s USB cable to your PC and restarting, check out the USB devices on your system by running the command ‘lsusb’. If you see a line with the words:

D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalax TouchScreen

then we’re in business. I know how to set that one up!

Give the screen a sneaky tap with your finger. Marvel at how the computer seems to recognise a mouse click event (you may notice it highlights some text, or scares a small child from your PC case), but doesn’t yet doesn’t recognise mouse movement events.

Go on over to http://210.64.17.162/web20/TouchKitDriver/linuxDriver.htm and select the file called ‘Kernel 2.6.x with xorg 1.4.0 only’. At the time of writing the direct link to this file is here. It may have moved by the time you read this.

Anyway. Extract the TouchKit-2.03.tar.gz file. It contains a folder with 2 files and a tar archive in it. Good times.

At the command line move to the TouchKit folder you just extracted and run the following command:

sudo sh setup.sh

Wait a sec and be rewarded with the following menu. I’ve left in the choices I made.

(*) Linux driver installer for TouchKit controller

(I) Begin to setup TouchKit Linux driver.
(I) Checking user permission: root, you are the supervisor.
(I) Extract TouchKit driver package to /usr/local/TouchKit_x14.
(I) Create TouchKit utility shortcut in /usr/bin.
(I) Copy X module egalax_drv.so to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input.

(Q) Which interface controller do you use?
(I) [1] RS232 [2] PS/2 [3] USB : (I) Please choose [1], [2] or [3]
(A) 3
(I) Using interface: USB
(I) Found a HID compliant touch controller.
(I) Found kernel module usbtouchscreen.
(I) It is highly recommended that add it into blacklist.
(Q) Do you want to add it into blacklist? (y/n) y
(I) Add kernel module usbtouchscreen into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

(I) Found X configuration file xorg.conf in /etc/X11.
(I) Add touch configuration into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

(I) Please reboot the system for some changes to take effect.

Reboot your system

When the system comes back up you can calibrate and adjust your touchscreen by running sudo /usr/bin/TouchKit

Jobs a gud’un.

— Update

You may find that clicking on the desktop leaves irritating little selection box artifacts that wont go away. You can sort this out by changing the xorg.conf configuration that the TouchKit application generates.

Change SendCoreEvents to CorePointer (I edited out the default config at the top there). Problem solved.

Section “ServerLayout”
### InputDevice “EETI” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice “EETI” “CorePointer”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen “Default Screen”

Unfortunately though you may find that your mouse no longer works. Swings and roundabouts!

I’ve let this blog go a little quiet lately because I’m lazy…

I noticed a fun little meme over at planet.ubuntu-uk.org so thought I’d join in to see if the old blog still works!

Snapper? Well, the conversation went on and on about him.

- Seven Troop, Andy McNab

To join in just follow the instructions below:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.