homemade touch screen monitors free sample

Rather than plug your Raspberry Pi into a TV, or connect via SSH (or remote desktop connections via VNC or RDP), you might have opted to purchase a Raspberry Pi touchscreen display.

Straightforward to set up, the touchscreen display has so many possibilities. But if you"ve left yours gathering dust in a drawer, there"s no way you"re going to experience the full benefits of such a useful piece of kit.

The alternative is to get it out of the drawer, hook your touchscreen display to your Raspberry Pi, and reformat the microSD card. It"s time to work on a new project -- one of these ideas should pique your interest.

Let"s start with perhaps the most obvious option. The official Raspberry Pi touchscreen display is seven inches diagonal, making it an ideal size for a photo frame. For the best results, you"ll need a wireless connection (Ethernet cables look unsightly on a mantelpiece) as well as a Raspberry Pi-compatible battery pack.

In the example above, Belkin WeMo switches and a Nest thermostat are manipulated via the Raspberry Pi, touchscreen display, and the InControlHA system with Wemo and Nest plugins. ST:TNG magic comes from an implementation of the Library Computer Access and Retrieval System (LCARS) seen in 1980s/1990s Star Trek. Coder Toby Kurien has developed an LCARS user interface for the Pi that has uses beyond home automation.

Building a carputer has long been the holy grail of technology DIYers, and the Raspberry Pi makes it far more achievable than ever before. But for the carputer to really take shape, it needs a display -- and what better than a touchscreen interface?

Now here is a unique use for the Pi and its touchscreen display. A compact, bench-based tool for controlling hardware on your bench (or kitchen or desk), this is a build with several purposes. It"s designed to help you get your home automation projects off the ground, but also includes support for a webcam to help you record your progress.

The idea here is simple. With just a Raspberry Pi, a webcam, and a touchscreen display -- plus a thermal printer -- you can build a versatile photo booth!

Projects along these lines can also benefit from better use of the touchscreen. Perhaps you could improve on this, and introduce some interesting photo effects that can be tweaked via the touchscreen prior to printing?

How about a smart mirror for your Raspberry Pi touchscreen display project? This is basically a mirror that not only shows your reflection, but also useful information. For instance, latest news and weather updates.

Naturally, a larger display would deliver the best results, but if you"re looking to get started with a smart mirror project, or develop your own from scratch, a Raspberry Pi combined with a touchscreen display is an excellent place to start.

Want to pump some banging "toons" out of your Raspberry Pi? We"ve looked at some internet radio projects in the past, but adding in a touchscreen display changes things considerably. For a start, it"s a lot easier to find the station you want to listen to!

This example uses a much smaller Adafruit touchscreen display for the Raspberry Pi. You can get suitable results from any compatible touchscreen, however.

We were impressed by this project over at Hackster.io, but note that there are many alternatives. Often these rely on compact LCD displays rather than the touchscreen solution.

Many home automation systems have been developed for, or ported to, the Raspberry Pi -- enough for their own list. Not all of these feature a touchscreen display, however.

Another great build, and the one we"re finishing on, is a Raspberry Pi-powered tablet computer. The idea is simple: place the Pi, the touchscreen display, and a rechargeable battery pack into a suitable case (more than likely 3D printed). You might opt to change the operating system; Raspbian Jessie with PIXEL (nor the previous desktop) isn"t really suitable as a touch-friendly interface. Happily, there are versions of Android available for the Raspberry Pi.

Students will save money and solve the problem of messy fingers on their iPad/iPhone touch screens by building a simple stylus from everyday materials. The take-away stylus will meet all the required criteria: a flat, smooth, conductive surface more than ¼ inch wide. Students will troubleshoot to solve engineering problems.

Build Your Own Touch Screen Stylus is part of the STEM2D Student Activity Series. The content and layout were both developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center as part of Johnson & Johnson"s WiSTEM2D initiative (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing, and Design), using a template provided by FHI 360 and JA Worldwide. This series includes a suite of interactive and fun, hands-on activities for girls (and boys), ages 5-18, globally.

I have one of the earrrly pi’s (256MB), and running kweb browser (for minimal browser size). When the picture changes, I get a scroll bar in the browser which stays up for about 1-2 seconds, then leaves, and the picture resizes to full-screen. Does Chromium do this??

I have a V1 Pi so I downloaded Wheezy. Everything worked fine except I can’t get it to launch automatically into the browser and full screen when turned on. Would I need to change where it says ‘chromium’ to ‘ephinany’?

Hi Jamie, in Raspbian Wheezy, the autostart file is here: /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart. So you’ll want to add your commands there. I’m not sure of the command for epiphany in full screen. You might want to install Chromium if possible!

I was actually wondering if it would be possible to make a picture wall with several different sized screens like the guys did with PiWall only in stead of video with pictures from Instagram/Flickr etc. and if I would need the same setup eg: one pi per screen and a master?

Love this product. I’m having a consistent issue though running Debian Jessie and Chromium… every few update cycles I get the white screen which says that the content cannot be displayed and I have to f5 refresh. I installed an extension which refreshes the page every few minutes and it seemed to help lengthen the periods between crashes… but if the page crashes between cycles of the refresh extension, then it doesn’t work. Any recommended workarounds?

i have completed the diy dakboard and im having a issue where i have to expand the browser to full screen after it boots and loads the browser. Any idea’s? Thank you David

Hey Simon, no problem! You’ll want to use the “–kiosk” flag in the autostart file to start chromium in full screen (removing the address bar). The –noerrdialogs and –incognito flags should hide those shut down messages.

Hey Thank you for the help today with the full screen issue i was having I have built two of the dakboards total one for my household and one for my dads house. I am very interested in the rss feed option. I hope you enjoy the two beers. Thanks again.

If you have your screen mounted vertically/portrait, make sure you have the “Screen Orientation” option set to portrait as well, in the DAKboard settings (gear icon). This will put the events across the top and give you a lot more room! Hope that helps.

Other than that minor issue,it’s working great. I am also trying to replace the automatic shut off based on time and instead using a PIR sensor to shut the screen off after a few minutes of no motion detected.

OniK, so I’m using midori, as chromium seems to just stop after a while of running. Now it seems that the midori version is doing the same thing. It starts up, and runs for a while (not sure how long yet) then later it shows just the black (background) screen, indicating that the midori browser has quit.

I started on a RPi 3 but have moved it to a Pi Zero with the same image and it’s working. It’s seems a bit slow in that there is a 6-8 second freeze when the photo changes. I’m not sure why but I’m going to work further on it. If I can get that ironed out I’m going to look at mounting the zero inside the screen case as there’s enough empty space

However, I just found DAKboard yesterday and LOVED IT immediately. Such a beautiful interface. I loaded it up on a fullscreen browser in Android on the MM. Unfortunately, the interface is just way too small for that small of a screen. The scaling isn’t right, and I’m hoping that is a feature that can be added later to adapt to smaller screens so I can use it in the future. I would love to be able to have a few screens around the house too displaying some more ‘custom’ information or RSS feeds. Thank you Dan, I’ll be following the project!

my question is do you know of a way to integrate a motion detector to power the screen on and off when it detects movement? …. sorry if this is not the proper place to ask i am very new to raspberry pi…. i have had one for year but all ive ever done is play mario on it…

Henk – tell us more. I want to use some device in my house that knows I’m home (nest/dropcam/Canary/etc) to tell the screen to turn on when it knows I’m home, and off when I leave.

it shuts the hdmi signal off, however when it comes back up it’s a black screen. When I manually hit Ctrl+Alt+f6 it pulls up the login screen where i would enter the login and after that I hit Ctrl+Alt+f7 and it starts the DakBoard. What am I doing wrong that it is not starting automatically?

2. Any plans for a way to advance the calendar – I know this would require a mouse or touch capability but would be really useful to scroll through the calendar when on the phone etc.

You don’t use your username and password. You need to go to your “Account” screen at dakboard.com and use the link titled “Private URL”. That will tell the system to load that page.

I have messed up at the point where I wrote the code for the autostart part. I successfully get back to Terminal to rewrite it, but something is still wrong and I’m only getting the Incognito screen with no Dakboard. The background is black when i remove -kiosk. How do I remove the autostart all together it so it reboots to the Raspbian GUI home again?

I just read about this in MagPi. Looks pretty neat. I haven’t read through all the comments but was wondering if you considered using one of the GPIO pins to connect to a sensor (infrared and others) to detect when someone is in front of display to turn on screen? That way the screen is dark when no one is around to see it. Saves life of display along with power. Just a suggestion.

Another way to do this, is to use a service like IFTTT with some home automation triggers to turn on the screen when the other devices know you are home.

E.g.: My Canary home security system “knows” I am home based on GPS/Bluetooth proximity. It also knows that there is movement, regardless of who it is. I’d like to have the screen off during the day unless it sees movement.

If you are having problems getting stuck at the “incognito” screen on startup, you might try entering the @chromium line in “autostart” directly rather than cut&paste. I think cut&paste from the instruction above introduces an extra line feed somehow. I put the url directly following the — kiosk command, and followed it with -incognito (with a single -, as suggested on another site). I’m not sure which change did the trick, but I’m betting it was forcing the url early enough so it didn’t get messed up.

Love DAKboard and the fact that it uses RPI3 makes it great for projects especially with FLICKR being an add on photo source. I like the idea of the pictures rotating through while on calendar mode, but I was wondering, I’ve searched all over the vast internet and found different things about making the calendar also a smart photo display so that its not a constant calendar on the screen but rather works like a screen saver to display photos. I know that it requires the install of a PIR to wake it up and go back to DAKboard display but I just cant seem to find the coding to make it into a screensaver as well as to access FLICKR the same way you guys do on the calendar side. Here is the video that created the idea that I wanted to duplicate:

( https://youtu.be/BjcLACRTiUw ) I already have the monitor and RPI setup to access the DAKboard interface but just wanted to add the screensaver feature the same way just using FLICKR rather than GOOGLE for everything. If this is something you guys can help me out with that would be phenomenal.

To test this I set up samba, created a shared drive location and drop a couple of files there. I can access the pictures from my file system and through my Apache2 server. When I configure DAKboard to use the URL of the location of the picture files, I just get a black screen. Why? Any help is very much appreciated.

I’m working on setting this up for my wife as a birthday present. I love it so far. One problem I am running into is on the display it will only show me 3 days of the week. I can’t find in the dakboard settings how to make the screen orientation portrait. I know this has to be something simple I am overlooking.

I’m using the script referenced above and am able to get the monitor to sleep at the appropriate time, however when it ‘wakes up’, the screen is black, even though the PI is still on

Hi, I had the same issue and could not get it to work reliably. I ended up using a WiFi enabled power socket (Orvibo) to power the screen off and on a schedule. The benefit of this approach is you can use a Home Automation application (I use Domoticz) to control it.

It was fun and easy to do this project with your explanation. Only ran against 1 thing. I do not use a screen connected to hdmi, but the raspberry 7″ display. That is connected with the ‘ribbon’.

I have followed the instructions to a “T”, as far as I can tell. However after reboot I only get an incognito gray screen – not the DAKboard site. What am I doing wrong?

I’ve recently set up a free account and have everything running on a Raspberry Pi 2 and a 20in Dell widescreen, but for the life of me I can’t find the DAKBoard setting to change my predefined screen to portrait.

I can see the aspect ratio and orientation settings on the (disabled) custom screen, but not the default predefined screen available for free accounts.

Everything works but my browser (Chromium) will not auto-login at DAKboard. I have saved my login in my browser, I have pasted my private-URL adress in command line but after reboot I see DAKboard loginpage in fullscreen?

Thanks for this nice tutorial. Everything worked perfect except one thing. When it starts up the HDMI port at 05:00. I woke up at 07:00 and found the screen lit up and on but the pi seemed to send out a dark screen. Rebooted the pi and it started up correct. What might be the problem? Pi going into sleep mode?

Easiest way I found is to open another terminal session CTRL-ALT-F2 and then login. You can then shutdown the pi from there. CTRL-ALT-F7 will put you back in the DAK screen.

I have set up a raspberry Pi runinng my DakBoard in a kiosk mode browser that opens my Dakboard screen on boot – but when loaded I’m asked to login despite I use the private URL from the screens settings and defaults.

Hey folks! Recently we put out this video (also shown below) showing off our new touch screen features, and it’s safe to say it was quite popular! In this article we’ll be giving you instructions on how you can build your own version of this setup at home. Product links in this article are affiliate links.

This is the big one; a TV built directly into a table! These can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands depending on the features and craftsmanship. The sky is the limit with this setup, as you can add speakers, lighting, or even cup holders! Depending on your touch screen solution, the TV will either be flush with the table, or slightly recessed. If you aren’t confident to chop up a table yourself, contact your local carpenter, or one of the many companies creating ready-made digital tables.

The most important part of this build is the thing that will actually be detecting your minis. There’s two main types of touch screens you’ll want to consider: capacitive and infrared. The touch technology you use will determine if there’s anything else you’ll need to get your setup up and running.

IR Overlays work by firing out infrared light in a grid pattern and registering a touch point where the grid is broken. They’re cheap, relatively accurate, and they can detect any object that you put in the middle of them. We personally like these because it can detect any mini right out of the box. There are a solid list of cons though, depending on how you like to run your sessions.

Because the detection is done from the frame inwards, objects that the IR beam can’t hit won’t be detected. This can be noticed when clumping minis together, or if some unfortunate positioning leaves a mini in a dead zone. As the frame detects everything that enters it, dice rolls or accidental droppage can cause unintended reveals. This is something we will address with future versions of the Master’s Toolkit. An IR Overlay also doesn’t play nice with 3D terrain, so you may want to opt for a different solution if you enjoy busting out the Dwarven Forge dungeons. Finally, if you play somewhere with large amounts of IR light, your touch screen may have detection issues.

These screens are the ones we find in nearly every device today. They detect touch input by sensing when an electrically conductive material is applied to them. This is usually your finger or a stylus. There is no risk of blocking your minis, as the source of detection is the screen itself.There’s also no risk of interference from other light sources, meaning they can be used in all conditions.

While capacitive screens solve a lot of the issues that IR touch screens can face, there is extra cost and work involved in preparing your minis for detection. The main downside of these devices is that standard mini bases are made of plastic, and therefore are not conductive. You’ll need to find custom bases with a capacitive material, usually involving copper or aluminium. Aluminium foil can often work in a pinch, but results can be iffy. As a general rule of thumb, if it works on your smartphone, it’ll work on your screen. As capacitive touch screens put you in charge of what does and doesn’t get detected, you can safely use 3D terrain on these screens.

At this moment in time, there’s two pieces of software you’ll need to get your touch screen up and running. Our first version of this feature requires two devices, one of which must be running Windows. There’s no spec requirements for this second device. It just needs to be able to connect to WiFi. As time goes on, we’ll be working to get the second device to a much cheaper price point and more convenient size.

This is the most important part of your setup! Right now the Toolkit interprets all touch points as vision to reveal. In the future we’ll be performing some software wizardry to allow selective touch reveal, touch dead-zones, and a bunch of other fun features.

In the first release of this feature, we’ve got some simple options available. For a full overview, check out our sister article that explains how to use and configure the MT Touch Client: https://arkenforge.com/mt-touch-client/

Those of you on Windows may have noticed a new option in your Launcher – MT Touch Client. This software runs on a Windows device connected to your touch screen. Some of you may be wondering: “Why do I need a second device + software to use the touch screen? Can’t I just plug it into my main computer” That’s a pretty valid question. The primary reason is that touch input steals control of the mouse. This stops the Toolkit from being useable once minis are in play, and can lead to a lot of unintended UI selection. Another fun fact is that Windows clears ALL touch points if it detects a point for more than 60 seconds. This is counterproductive when dealing with minis that are often on the board for hours at a time.

For this reason, we created the MT Touch Client software to send touch information to the Toolkit over the local network. The only thing you need to do is run the software. It’ll automatically connect to the Toolkit and handle everything from there. One other benefit of having an external app is that the Toolkit can remain platform independent, so whether you’re running on PC, Mac, or Wine, you don’t need to worry about drivers or compatibility issues. For a full overview of the MT Touch Client, view our sister article here: https://arkenforge.com/mt-touch-client/

For those who want to perform your own fun fog of war integration, the Toolkit receives fog data via OSC. Port 7001, Address “/FogOfWarPosition”. Data will need to be in the string format “[touch point]|[x position]|[y position]”, where [touch point] is an integer from 0 – 99, [x/y position] is a decimal value from 0 – 1 representing the screen position, and ‘|’ is the separator character.

You’ve now got everything you need to get a touch screen setup up and running! If this feels like a bit too much work, we’ll be looking to release a kit that contains everything you need in the future. Be sure to stay on the lookout for that!

Most smart phones and tablets have capacitive touch screens. This is an impressive bit of technology that lets you interact directly with the screen using only your finger. But there is one problem with this kind of interface, messy finger foods. Nobody wants streaks of food all over their screen. One way to solve this problem is to use capacitive stylus. But you don"t need to spend a lot of money on a commercial stylus when you can make one for free out of everyday items. In this instructable, I am going to share with you a few of my favorite designs for a DIY capacitive stylus.

There are several different kinds of capacitive sensing. But in general, they all work by using an array of sensors to monitor the electrostatic field around the screen. When your finger touches the screen, it changes the electrical capacitance of that portion of the screen. This is detected as a change in voltage at various locations. The microprocessor captures, filters, and analyzes the data. Then it calculates the coordinates of where the touch occurred. You can read more about capacitive sensing here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_sensing

1. A conductive surface: It must be able conduct an electrical charge between your hand and the screen. If the material is too resistive or if the distance between your hand and the screen is too great, the signal reaching the screen may be too weak to be detected.

Following these criteria, you can find a wide variety of common items that can be used to activate a capacitive touch screen. Here are five of my favorite designs for a DIY capacitive stylus.

Probably the most interesting material that can be used to activate a capacitive touch screen is a sponge. It"s cheap, effective and actually cleans your screen as you use it. But a sponge is a bit too flexible to make an effective stylus as it is. To fix this, the easiest thing to do is to insert the sponge into a metal pen barrel or other metal tube. This gives it shape and makes it a lot easier to work with.

Hi,. If the sensitive part, the screen sensor, is removed because it could no more functioning, what can I do? Can any of the methods listed work? If they could not, what do you think can work for this situation.

Hi, I am a phone technician here. What controls touch is on the actual motherboard, you can’t get it removed, but it can stop touch when There is bending or breakage with tiny pins located on the motherboard. Also, if you see a weird gray line at the top of your screen that comes and goes, it’s a software issue.

Searching for the best and brightest large touch screen monitor for your office? Sounds like someone got an increase in their A/V budget. We’re not surprised, seeing as employee experience and self-service tech is a hot topic these days, with a 2017 Deloitte study stating that almost 80 percent of executives believe it’s important to very important. One way to improve employee experience is with transparency and visibility. Large-format touch screen displays showing interactive office maps in your lobby, kitchen, and elevator bay, for example, accomplish just that.

For the best-case scenario when employees interact with a large format touch screen display in your office, we recommend looking for these qualities to make for a quick, easy and accurate experience.

• Multi-touch vs single-touch:if you’re looking to use software that has zoom capabilities (like Robin interactive maps), you want to look for multi-touch displays. These could also be good for large-format displays where multiple people may be trying to click around, or if the software has any added multi-touch functionality (similar to Apple’s trackpad two-finger scroll or page flip motions).

• 5-wire resistive or infrared touch screens:Between the two, they cover the best circumstances for touch screen technology from transmissivity, type of object able to be used (stylus vs. finger), and more.There are technically five different types of touch screen technology, which you can read more about here.

We made a quick list of five the best touch screen options for your office lobbies and elevator bays. At Robin, we’ve tried out both Chromebase and Elo touch screen displays, both being solid options as they’re relatively easy to mount and setup. We also pulled some favorites from across the web.

Pros:Many format and size options, from seamless to matrixed video walls to simple large format touch screen displays. Includes infrared and multi-touch options.Cons:They seem to be expensive (but, you get what you pay for, if you’re looking for a 70” display or an entire wall)

You’re in luck. A fair amount of the larger format touch screen technology we’ve seen works with a standard TV. Seems like the industry recognizes it’s worth reusing a standard TV and simply making it touch-enabled with an overlay “frame” of sorts. Here are a ton of size options for infrared, multi-touch overlays from OPTIR via Tyco Touch.

An ideal office scenario would be to have a large-format touch screen monitor in your lobby and on each floor in the elevator bay or kitchen areas. These are often the highest-trafficked collision points in an office and therefore the places where employees would greatly benefit from seeing an interactive map and schedule of the workplace.

As your company grows, you’ll want to keep up the pace of strong internal communications and visibility. Large-format displays, especially touch screen ones, help you accomplish this objective really easily.

From wayfinding and conference room booking to internal communications of all types, having touch screens in high-traffic locations will make you look like the office admin superstar you really are. You could welcome new hires, tell everyone about a new product, or roll out a brand new software tool (like Robin) via these screens.

The best touchscreen monitors can offer advantages for certain workflows. Whether it’s for creative use or to improve general productivity tasks, the best touchscreen displays can make navigating certain programs more intuitive and more precise, particularly for tasks like making a selection in an image.

They can deliver a seamless, responsive experience that feels like writing with a pen on paper, and an immediacy that you don"t get with even the best mice to the best keyboards. But while touch screens now abound in phones and tablet, most monitors don"t offer touch. There are some excellent touch displays out there, however.

Below, we"ve made our pick of the best touchscreen monitors after evaluating a range of options for their accuracy and responsiveness, design, extra features and price. From regular-sized displays ideal for a desktop PC to portable monitors for those on the road, these are the best touchscreen monitors we"ve found.

If you prefer a more traditional monitor, possibly with a higher resolution, check out guides to the best monitors for photo editing and the best 4K monitors. If accurate colours are important to you, whether you’re a photographer or video editor, you might want to invest in one of the best monitor calibrator tools.

With so many options on the market, our choice of the best touchscreen monitors comes down to the details. And detail is something that Dell"s P2418HT monitor does brilliantly. This 1080p monitor on a 23.8-inch panel boasts an LCD screen to deliver excellent resolution, contrast, and colour. Moreover, it boasts an anti-glare surface that works beautifully in distracting light conditions as well as ultra-thin bezels that give it a stylish flair and you more screen real estate.

Looking for a cheap touchscreen monitor from a reputable brand? The 21.5in Dell P2219H IPS monitor is available at a brilliant price, and it still does an impressive job, making it one of the best touchscreen monitors available for those on a tighter budget.

While creative professionals usually go for larger screens, there’s definitely a place for portable monitors in content creation. Nomadic users in particular can benefit from a portable monitor that’s designed specifically with video editors, designers, and music producers in mind.

The ProArt Display PA148CTV is something of a rarity in the sea of portable monitors with its robust set of features targeted towards creatives. They include the Asus Dial, a physical dial that you can use to make effortless adjustments to your project whether you’re in Lightroom, Premiere Pro, or Photoshop. There’s also the Virtual Control Panel function, which allows you to use the display itself as your touchscreen control panel, simplifying your workflow.

The ViewSonic TD2230 is small, light and portable touchscreen monitor, making it perfect for anyone with limited desk space and/or who needs to travel with their screen. The 22in, Full HD, IPS display offers beautifully sharp image quality and high visual accuracy. The screen is also scratch-poof, and the bookstand design allows it to be tilted and adjusted from 20 to 70 degrees, or rested flat.

The connection ports are all on the side of the monitor, offering easy access. You get HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA and USB connectivity. The monitor offers low power consumption – great for both your pocket and the planet. The colours are a little dull, but overall this is an excellent buy for anyone looking for a portable touchscreen monitor.

The Philips 242B9T is another good touchscreen monitor. It might not be the most stylish looking touch monitor but it has an awful lot to offer. For a start, it comes with built-in 2W speakers. Also, you can connect it to a wide range of devices via HDMI, DVI, VGA and DisplayPort.

The Asus VT229H comes with many features you’ll find on most touchscreen monitors, including 10-point multi-touch capacity, 178/178 viewing angles, flicker-free backlighting, and blue light filter to make it easy on the eyes. However, it also boasts a few extras you won’t find on rival displays, and these help make your workflow more seamless.

Want a larger touchscreen monitor? Most touchscreen monitors tend to be on the smaller side, but this 27in offering from Planar offers a relatively large IPS LED-backlit display. While Full HD is a little thin for a 27in display, the screen offers dependable color accuracy and contrast that won"t shift depending on where you"re looking.

It"s a versatile monitor too, with a built-in HD webcam and microphone, making it great for home office working and video conferencing. It boasts 10-point capacitive multi-touch and an ergonomic stand that can take the display from completely flat to a 70-degree tilt.Is it worth buying a touchscreen monitor?If you’ve ever used a touchscreen laptop and wished you could do the same at your desk, then the slightly higher price of a touchscreen monitor over its non-touch counterpart is well worth it. After all, there’s no other way to get that kind of nuanced control when navigating various windows and apps. For example, if you want to translate handwriting to text or draw directly on the screen using your finger, one of these panels is the way to do it. And, instead of having to use keyboard shortcuts to carry out a command, you can perform the actual action directly on the screen.

But, you won’t be holding a touchscreen display the way you would a tablet or smartphone. So, consider whether you’re comfortable using your fingers to navigate a screen that’s sitting at eye level for long periods.What are the disadvantages of a touchscreen monitor?There are some drawbacks to using a touchscreen monitor. For example, holding your arm up to interact with a touchscreen throughout a day’s worth of work will get tiring no matter how strong you are. And, you’ll have to clean that screen regularly. Otherwise, that buildup of smudges and fingerprints can get in the way of seeing it properly.

Most importantly, however, touchscreen displays are more likely to experience some kind of damage. This is because there’s much more going on under the hood than with non-touch monitors. And, when something goes wrong, it will cost more to fix due to the more complicated design of these panels.What is a 10-point touchscreen?A 10-point touchscreen can register 10 distinct points of contact all at once. Not all touchscreen devices and displays utilise this technology. But, having it makes a huge difference in the accuracy of your taps, swipes, and various gestures. With one or two-point touchscreens, any accidental contact like the edge of your palm grazing the screen could confuse the interface and register a tap where it shouldn’t be. Utilising a 10 point touchscreen largely eliminates that kind of accidental interaction. And, it also allows for more complex interactions like typing directly on the screen.Can I use a touch screen monitor with any computer?Yes, you can use a touch-sensitive screen with any PC, or even a laptop. provided it has the right ports to connect with your machine. Check what ports your device has, but most touchscreen monitors will have several, including USB and HDMI.

Because of this, touchscreen displays will play an important role in allowing digital collaboration between hybrid teams to continue in a seamless way. Up until a few years ago, touchscreens were clunky devices that were too complex and difficult to use. But improvements in the accuracy of the touch interface have enhanced the user experience greatly. You can now use them with the familiarity of your personal touch devices.

There are a number of great reasons for using digital devices in your sessions, but choosing which touchscreen display to get is not that straightforward. The touchscreen display market is becoming increasingly crowded with many different brands, screen technologies, sizes, and extras to choose from. And more importantly also the space, software, methods, and people need to be taken into account before such an investment is made.

For a smooth MURAL experience we recommend using a good graphics card and at least 8GB of RAM (but preferably 16GB of RAM). This will make sure the touch experience is smooth.

Try quick drawing and moving sticky notes in MURAL to see how the latency (delay) of the screen is. The less latency the better, as we’ve seen screens not being used because of their high latency.

By asking yourself each of the questions below, you can make sure that you are making an investment in a touchscreen display that will allow your hybrid, remote, and in-person teams to collaborate effectively.

Start with the question: what is the main purpose and use case for this touchscreen display? Too often we have seen touchscreens collecting dust because the purpose for using it wasn’t clear from the beginning.

Work here is often done in break-out groups of five to eight people where they will work on one screen to solve a problem using a variety of techniques. This set-up is very flexible and groups are often moved around different areas of the space. Touch experience, multi-touch (allows multiple people to work on the screen at the same time) and movability of the device are very important here. The screen size can also be a bit smaller. For instance, you can even do breakout group work on a 27” touchscreen monitor set up on a hightop table.

The only person interacting with the screen will be a presenter or facilitator, to display their presentation, synthesize work and make annotations. The larger the screen the better here. Sometimes it is even connected to a large projector for bigger groups. Multi-touch experience is not crucial. And the screen might be in a fixed position.

Touchscreen displays typically come in screen diameters of 55”, 65”, 75” and 85”. But also 27” touchscreen monitors such as the Microsoft Surface Studio could work well.

If we bring this back to the use cases mentioned earlier, break-out sessions in innovation labs are often best served by a 55-65” screen, but the 27” Microsoft Surface Studio on top of a high table works just as well. For presentation rooms you would almost always need to go for the largest screen size, or even connect it to a projector with a larger screen size. And meeting rooms could best use a 55-75” screen, depending on the size of the room.

We’ve seen large touchscreen displays mounted to a wall in a meeting room where it was just being used for screen sharing like a normal TV screen. You want to avoid that.

The advantage of having the screen on a rolling stand is that its users will be able to work in the best places to support whatever task is at hand. It allows people to be more agile and creative. Which is essential for teams in innovation labs. But it can also provide more flexibility to meeting and presentation rooms, as you are likely not going to equip every single room with a touchscreen display.

Reasons for why touchscreen displays are fixed to a wall are because of saving space and aesthetics. But also IT might not want to have expensive equipment moving around. And the extra cost of a rolling stand might weigh in sometimes too.

Next to a big screen on a rolling stand, a smart projector like Adok is an interesting solution to provide a touch ‘screen’ in a portable format, that can be set up anywhere.

OPS PC’s are shipped with every Operating System PC’s can have and are usually the norm for corporate clients, for example to run Windows 10 that is standard across other devices. Next to that these PCs are added to have more power in order to run more advanced software and have a better touch experience. Just like built-in PCs these can be set up both in PC/Desktop or Kiosk mode.

This is a new concept for touchscreen displays that is gaining popularity recently. Here the display is basically just an empty screen without any operating system. You just connect your own device to make use of the screen. It’s plug & play to project your device’s display on the big screen and use its touchscreen to control. This has two advantages. No worries for IT because there is nothing to secure on the touchscreen display. And ease of use for the user because they know very well how to operate their personal device.

The Microsoft Windows Collaboration Displays developed by Avocor and Sharp are great examples of this. But you can essentially connect your personal device to any touchscreen display. You can for example connect your device running Windows 10 to a Samsung Flip (that has an Android based OS) to run the apps you need.

Some touchscreen displays come with webcam and microphone integrated. Others are easily upgradeable with a camera plus microphone such as the Huddly. Both of these options work great when collaborating with a smaller team close to the screen.