[Windows 10, 8, 7, XP etc.] albertstc01:
Hi,

I build portable hand held Windows 10 computers using stick PCs, a Kangaroo Plus mini PC and attaching them to 5" and 7" HDMI screens. A hand held device being one that can be held in one hand and mouse movement and text input via an on screen keyboard can be entered with the other.

I overlay a resistive touch panel and use USB controllers PenMount PM6300A-8 Controller board or Micro Chip AR1100 boards in digitizer mode. In digitizer these will fill the following touch controls:

1 Touch = equivalent to Left Mouse Click

2 Long Press = equivalent to Right Mouse Button Click

3 When the windows screen is rotated landscape to portrait and vice versa touch activity remains under the stylus and moves as expected.

4 Stylus press and hold for dragging windows and icons around the screen is available.

5 The equivalent to Right Mouse Button Click SHOULD NOT be activated while dragging.

The HDMI screens I use are from Ebay or AliExpress and marketed towards Raspberry PI consumers. They come with a touch panel built on and a touch controller built in.

If it is a capacitive touch panel then I definitely remove it and replace it with a third party resistive touch panel and use an external USB controller. Capacitive finger touch is not fit for the purpose of activating the small menu buttons in desktop software such desk top publishing and graphics manipulation. A resistive touch stylus point control is needed.

I have not been able to get 5" or 7" HDMI screens with a built on resistive touch panels and built in touch controllers to use all the touch controls listed above, that is with the Windows 10 OS. This is annoying because that would enable building a slim compact hand held portable device. Currently the external USB controller boards add depth and bulk. The PenMount board being the worst where it's JST connectors add 10mm to the home build devices height. The Micro Chip AR1100 board is less bulky but a built in controller would still make the screen slimmer and neater.

There are a number of vendors on Ebay and other web sites marketing 5" or 7" HDMI screens with a built on resistive touch panels. Their sales are mainly focused to the Raspberry PI so I assume touch can be configured and work satisfactory with Raspberry PI Linux Operating Systems. The promotional support for working as a monitor for Windows 10 is something like "supports Windows 10/8.1/8/7, single touch, and driver free" The Windows plug and play driver that loads in doesn't always seem to work for me and when it does it doesn't fill the five touch functions above I require.

Help!

Waveshare seem to market a range of 5" and 7" HDMI screens. Some readers may have bought these and have them working with the Raspberry PI and other Linux OS devices. They could have not had reason to try and test touch functions fully with Windows 10. If there are readers who have bought Waveshare HDMI screens with built in resistive touch controllers and could plug them into a Windows 10 computer as single monitor, or as a second primary monitor to test touch I would be grateful. I need to know if the all the five functions above will work with any of them.

Thanks in advance albertstc01

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Notes:

My experience with Windows 10 resistive touch so far might be of interest.

PenMount and Micro Chip AR1100 boards can be configured as HID mouse or digitizer mode. If configured for digitizer mode when booting with Windows 10 the control panel 'Tablet PC Settings' with 'Pen And Touch' are available. It is the same for Windows 10 Settings. If the choice for HID mouse mode is used the tablet setting won't be installed or be available in Windows 10.

Of the two control boards my preference is for PenMount as its supporting software for Windows 10 will configure the touch controller for calibration. The AR1100 firmware utility does not work with Windows 10. The screen needs to be transfered temporally to a Windows 7 computer. The AR1100 utility does present itself in Windows 10 and show configuration tables but when entries are made, example for digitizer mode, and set, from then on the utility reports no EPROM found. It can be reset in Windows 7.

Adafruit sell a 5" 'backpacker' HDMI screen with built in resistive AR1100 FPC touch controller. Out of the box this screen's touch controller worked as a HID mouse but there was no long press function for equivalent right mouse click. I tried using AR1100 utility software with Windows 10 to change it to digitizer mode. As above after the first attempt the utility software always reported no EPROM found. I wrecked it by opening it up and damaging some circuitry. This was before I knew that it couldn't be configured with Windows 10 therefor I have not tried using the AR1100 firmware utility on the backpacker screen with Windows 7. If anybody has had hands on experience of doing this I would be interested in their comments.

I am not recommending anyone who uses a 'backpacker' screens on a Raspberry PI to use a Windows 7 PC to configure the controller to digitizer mode. I'm not sure of all the consequences. What works with an external USB AR1100 board controller might might not be recovered in Windows 7 the same way for a built in FPC AR1100 controller. Adafruit instructions are for using the Windows utility to calibrate and set up resistive touch for being transfered to the Raspberry PI and they promote the Mouse HID mode. They show no help or instructions for using digitizer mode for Windows Devices.

The 5" HDMI screen and resistive touch panel I had working got smashed. Finding a suitable external replacement resistive touch panel is easy. As indicated above finding a 5" HDMI screen on its own is hard to find. It is easy to find an small HDMI screens with touch panels already attached. These can be replaced by a third party touch panel and be operated by an external USB controller. It is also cheaper. I purchased 5" HDMI from AliExpress described as "GeeekPi 5 inch 800*480 LCD HDMI Touch Screen". As it had a resistive touch panel and controller built in I tried that first. Out of the box it booted up up into mouse HID mode ( 'Tablet PC Settings' with 'Pen And Touch' were not available in the control panel. ) The mouse touch cursor aligns and stays under the stylus point. A long press activates the equivalent to Right Mouse Button Click. But! When the screen is rotated out of landscape 0° mode all touch alignment is lost. Without the option to use portrait mode using Windows Desk top software becomes more or less impractical on small screens. If anyone has an idea how touch can be tweaked to stay aligned when the screen is rotated I would like to here of it?

To make resistive touch practical with Windows 10 panning needs to be turned off via the registry. Panning can be stopped by a registry tweak

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER,Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Touch

\PanningDisabled=1"