Hi there,

I’m planning on building a 24” LCD FTIR screen out of either a pixmania L2442wd or a BenQ G2400W, if anyone has an opinion of which might be better I’d be glad to read.

First of all I want to thank you for making this software available, and especially for the mouse driver… I didn’t try it yet though because at the moment I just use a not very stable setup in a big postbox without FTIR or IR…
I would like to use the screen as a second screen for my computer, it would be really nice if there was a way to make the mouse driver work in a way that it only covers the second screen, so i could use my real mouse for the first screen and drag the items into the second screen that i want to control per touchscreen. Is this possible ? If not it would be very nice if someone would do something like that or tell me how to do it (unfortunately I can’t program, I know a professional programmer, but he only works with Java).

I also would like to do something with symbol-tracing, since DI is not possible with an LCD as far as i know because the LCD will let IR only pass in one direction (is this right ?), symbols printed on paper wont be recognized I guess.
So to make this work I first thought of printing the symbols in gum (fill fluid gum into a form where the bright parts of the symbols stand out), which should make them good visible with FTIR since they would stick to the surface. The problem with that would be that they can’t be moved around smoothely, which would make it less comfort to use.
My other idea then was to make a mask of the symbol where the bright parts are removed and to light it with an IR-LED from behind… this would be a little tricky to build because of the style of the symbols. Sticking the dark parts to a thin piece of acrylic and lighting it from behind should do it i guess. But maybe symbols then would become a little diffused/blurred and of course it would need a battery or a cable attached to power it.
Has anyone another idea of how to make symbols visible and traceable or improvements to my ideas ?

Another issue is the backlighting of the LCD… i have read on this forum that TL-bars would be great. But what exactly is a TL-bar ? (I’m german and couldn’t find a translation for that… did they mean LED-bars of a special type ?)
Can’t I just use some normal fluorescent energy saving lamps ? Those should emit little to no IR depending on what color… or is that meant by a TL-bar ?

Hope someone picks up those issues…
Is there anybody that has tried to use the touchscreen as a second monitor or made some experience with symbol-tracing ?

Hi Emperor,

i can’t help you much with the backlighting but far as i know the LCD screens are using very thin fluorescent lamps for backöighting the screen. You should be able theoreticaly to use your own light (leds or standard energy saving lamps) but meybe you can still use your original lamps also - you will see that onec you have disassembled you monitor

Concerning fiducial symbols: i have my own toughts on this things when using FTIR. But be carefull - it is nothing tested by me - just theory…

1. you could simply plot out the simbols on an adhesive plastic material 1-2mm thick (folienbuchstaben). (It’s easy to do - you make you symbols in illustrator and go to a lettershop - is cheap to get that in germany. We are doing this for posters and signs for fairs.) After that you can stick that on a fancy looking acrylic plate. Same thing like your rubber idea - but easier to realise and better to move on your surface.

2. do you maybe know that fancy “black-lights” back in the ‘80 ? I am talking about fluorescent paints/foils. They are working with a cheap UV intensive fluorescent lamp which should not affect to much you visible image… Would be interesting to test out if the IR-cam can see that. Just a tought…

The idea with the plotted symbols seems good, maybe i could even just cut them out of a soft material… maybe some textile material like felt would do the job well, too.

Your best bet would be to use the original LCD backlight.  Depending on your display the backlight may be attached to the sides of the LCD or may be a separate enclosed unit.  I just did this with a 42” LCD and the backlight was in it’s own box that I could separate from the TFT (see my blog for some pictures)

If the original LCD backlight doesn’t do the job you can always add more lighting.

OK, seems like the backlight isn’t that big issue, just thought there might be problems because of IR.
Your 42” looks very nice…

I think I’ll handle the problem with the Symbols as well… the idea to cut them out of a soft material might be best…

Most important thing remaining for me is the mouse driver-issue… does anyone know if it’s possible to configure the driver in a way that it only covers the second screen so that i can connect the multitouch device as second screen and simply drag things i want to control per touchscreen into the second screen ?

This would be perfect for controlling music-software for example (which i would like to do with it).

Emperor,

i’m realy not the expert But far as i understand, you will need specific applications that can be used with the touchscreen. Take a look at the examples provided here in the forum. For example the flash apps like the picture viewer etc.. They are running in their own window, so there is no problem if you are using a dual screen setup - i have allready tested this with the TOIO simulator on my Mac with two screens. You can run the flash-app fullscreen on one screen using your modded touchy LCD and use your mouse on the other screen as usual… I did not tested the mousedriver in my setup, just was playing around with the TUIO stuff, so i don’t know if this applys also to the mousedriver…

Cheers!

Yes, Yes, sure I can do that....

But what I wish to do is just open Cubase, drag the mixer and some effects to the touchscreen and directly control them there to do the whole mixing part on the console and leave mouse and computer screen for the arrangement.
That would be soooooooo great. It surely would be great for a whole lot of other applications as well, as drawing/CAD, movie-editors, animating programs etc.......

I hope that maybe someone of the coders in here would find that great to and manipulate the mouse driver in a way that it only covers the second screen.
Maybe this is even possible right now by calibrating Touchlib the right way.....

By the way: I now ordered everything I need to start, I bought some Osram SFH 485-2 (75), an xbox 360 cam (from england, since they cost 20€ there and 45€ here in germany) and an iiyama E2403WS 24” monitor for 291€, which seems to be really superb for that price (2ms, 2000:1 contrast, HDMI, option to cut the picture to a picture of different proportion to not distort it like 4:3 or 16:9, advanced contrast and reaction options). And its supposed to make absolutely no sound, which is important to me too (the loudest thing in my room is my LG 20” Widescreen ever since i installed passive watercooling to my pc) Here’s a link :
http://www.321-express.de/tft-bildschirm-24-wide-prolite-e2403ws-2-ms--epid-448416.html I hope I can dismantle it easily.....

The acrylic might take some days… I asked the company if they could cut the edges of the acrylic by 40-45° and they said they maybe need some days to answer that....