Touchscreen (larger than PDA) for Meedio control

odyssey · Post by **odyssey** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:36 pm

Has anyone used any of the wireless touch panels (larger than a pocket PC) to control Meedio? I was thinking along the lines of a Viewsonic V210?

switzch · Post by **switzch** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:11 pm

i am using a 12" touchscreen.

you can see my post here.

http://www.meedio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19710

I wish is were wireless but it will do for now

RxMan · Post by **RxMan** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 12:05 am

I am also looking at adding some type of touch panel to my 'collection'.

I'm not sure if I should get a TabletPC (Fujitsu 3400) or a ViewSonic Airpanel (v110 or v115).

I guess the biggest difference is one is a full blown PC and the other basically acts as a second monitor to another PC.

Right now I have my HTPC running Meedio at 1280x720. Would the Airpanel be able to display this properly?

I want my touch screen to me able to do the following things in order of priority to me:

1. Play mp3s using JRiver MediaCenter

2. Control Meedio with basic DVD watching commands

3. Control X-10 devices via Housebot.

I am familiar with girder and netremote, etc....

I have seen people developing skins that control programs like the ones I mentioned above. Are these primarily for tablet pcs or from something like the Airpanel?

I like the Airpanel because it has longer battery life, is lighter and powers on instantly. I like the TabletPC because of the flexibility with use.

spike5884 · Post by **spike5884** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 8:53 pm

Be very careful with tablet pcs. I got two different ones off of ebay. I was thinking that I could put a wireless card in them and use them as a 'remote'. Only problem is that both screens are NOT touch sensitive. The screens only react to the stylist. One stylist even has a battery in it. Not real sure how the other one works.

RxMan · Post by **RxMan** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:16 pm

There are only a few models that I know of that support touch without a stylist. One popular model is the fujitsu 3400/3500.

I am still leaning towards the airpanel and using my server pc for the configuration.

spike5884 · Post by **spike5884** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:26 pm

Darn you.

Wish this topic would have come up a couple of weeks ago. There are a lot of airpanels on ebay for around $375. Interesting because they seem to retail for a lot more than that. Now the big questions is if I should go ahead and get one of those to use. Just have to figure out what to do with the tabletpcs I have.

odyssey · Post by **odyssey** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:37 pm

Watch out on Ebay as some of the Airports are factory refurbished. Still a good deal though. Some sellers do have NEW ones though.

I still want to understand HOW one of these gets used as a remote for Meedio. I have read about using one via RPC, but it is supposedly slow this way.

Has anyone actually setup an Airpanel or Airsync with Meedio? If so, how?

Paul Forgey · Post by **Paul Forgey** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 11:00 pm

odyssey wrote:Watch out on Ebay as some of the Airports are factory refurbished. Still a good deal though. Some sellers do have NEW ones though.

I still want to understand HOW one of these gets used as a remote for Meedio. I have read about using one via RPC, but it is supposedly slow this way.

Has anyone actually setup an Airpanel or Airsync with Meedio? If so, how?

I've got an AirPanel 110p. The display area is 800x600. Its not a full blown CE machine. Its sole purpose is to run an rdp client. One thing I do like about it is it will respond to finger presses as well as the stylus, giving it pronto-like usability. Fingerprints can be a problem if you are picky about keeping the display clean, but they have always cleaned up nicely using a microfiber cloth. Even fingers covered in movie food.

I'd love an AirSync but they are more than I want to spend on a remote. I'll probably snatch one up when I can get a similar deal that I got on my AirPanel, which was a fire sale price on a reconditioned one with warranty.

The thing that sucks about it is it has a long startup period when awaking from sleep because it has to start up the wireless interface, join the wireless network, obtain the ip address and set up the rdp connection. If you don't let it sleep, it will drain the battery within hours, even if the display is off. This can be a problem if you need to turn the volume down in a hurry halfway through a movie, like to answer the phone. Most of that time is actually spent establishing the rdp connection. Sometimes in this state you'll see the screen is blank, touch it to wake it up again, see the remote app running in rdp, but only once you actually go to touch it again do we see the thing really went to sleep and needs to restart the network connection. Once in a rare while, it will just get high and wander off until I use the stylus to hit the reset button.

I would like to hack my AirPanel to natively run one of the CE based remote control applications for increased reliability and lower overhead, but the AirPanel's 4.1 .NET version of CE doesn't have mfcce300.dll needed by the client. When I checked out the SDK software available for CE >4.0, mfcce*.dll no longer seems to be there. Since I'm not very familiar with CE, I haven't hacked on it much beyond that.

RxMan · Post by **RxMan** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 10:41 am

When you say a long time. Do you mean 15-20 seconds or so? That would seem like a long time when trying to turn down the volume. :)

The main use I want for mine it to play mp3s. I have an mx-500 remote controlling Meedio that will work fine for playing DVDs. I also want x-10 Housebot control. I just want to make sure I get the right thing and not waste time and money going in the wrong direction.

Do you ever use it outdoors? How is the view?

RxMan · Post by **RxMan** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 12:21 pm

Patience has never been one of my better virtues.

I went ahead and ordered a factory refurbished Airpanel v110p and the docking station. I found a site that had both for $340 with free shipping. If I end up hating the thing, I can always sell it on Ebay and probably make a small profit as x-mas gets closer.

I found this site about hacking the unit.

http://www.aibohack.com/panel/index.html

Paul Forgey · Post by **Paul Forgey** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 4:49 pm

RxMan wrote:Patience has never been one of my better virtues.

I went ahead and ordered a factory refurbished Airpanel v110p and the docking station. I found a site that had both for $340 with free shipping. If I end up hating the thing, I can always sell it on Ebay and probably make a small profit as x-mas gets closer.

I found this site about hacking the unit.

http://www.aibohack.com/panel/index.html

That's the hack I tried on mine. Sadly, the HouseBot remote application doesn't run in the environment because of the missing mfc dll.

RxMan · Post by **RxMan** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 4:56 pm

Paul,

Could you answer my questions above too?

Paul Forgey · Post by **Paul Forgey** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 5:04 pm

RxMan wrote:Paul,
Could you answer my questions above too?

Yes, by "long time" I do mean 15-20 seconds. I haven't tried it outdoors. The range is comparible to my old Macintosh PowerBook, which is to say not great.

The rdp client has wierd, minor bugs that I won't try to describe here, but nothing that makes it unable.

dlmorgan999 · Post by **dlmorgan999** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 10:29 pm

I'm using the older ViewPad from ViewSonic. I already owned one of these and so I tried it on HouseBot and it worked great. I ended up buying two more on ebay as did a couple of other friends of mine who are also setting up HouseBot systems.

I have cradles for all three but I also bought a Belkin wireless CF card for each one. They work fairly well overall but the key for me was buying the cradle. When I'm watching a movie I leave it in the cradle, powered on but screen blanked, so that it is always available. If I do put it in standby it can take 5-20 seconds to reinitialize the wireless connection.

Occasionally it goes off to never-never land and I have to hardware reset it but for the most part it works great. I rarely use the stylus to control it as a finger works fine as long as the control you are trying to press is big enough.

-- Dave

Paul Forgey · Post by **Paul Forgey** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 10:43 pm

dlmorgan999 wrote:I'm using the older ViewPad from ViewSonic. I already owned one of these and so I tried it on HouseBot and it worked great. I ended up buying two more on ebay as did a couple of other friends of mine who are also setting up HouseBot systems.
-- Dave

I'll have to try looking for a good price on one of these and figure out what to do with my AirPanel.