20/04: Touching Base
One area that we've had a lot of interest in at the shows is touch screens - something we've supported for many years, but only recently has touch screen pricing started to become more affordable.
Touch screens come in many shapes and sizes and use many different technologies for detecting keypresses. There are several different controllers available, but one of the most common is the eGalax USB controller, which is a basic resistive touch controller which is more than adequate for most environments.
Linux, which is the base OS for the MediaCAT, has native support for the eGalax driver, however recently we've seen a lot of controllers returning touch events using the Z/Rx axes, rather than the X and Y axes - this has required a bit of hackery on our part to make sure the driver, and the MediaCAT, works with both types.
MediaCAT has always supported touchscreens, with the process of creating touch enabled content being as simple as creating a web page - the MediaCAT presents touchs on the screen as a mouse click on your web page. If it works in your web browser on your PC, then it will work with a touch screen on your MediaCAT - even if the content is Flash based!
We've added some plugins to the browser to allow the touch environment to intact with the MediaCAT scheduling system too. Standard MediaCAT commands can all be passed to the MediaCAT scheduler using Javascript functions in the web browser which can be triggered by touch events on the screen. Commands can be used to change volume levels, start playlists, play certain content such as videos, or even control external outputs.
The next release of MediaCAT (more about that in a future blog post), also provides auto start/idling of touch enabled content. Active and in-active playlists can be configured, so that as soon as a user touches the screen, the active playlist will be run. If, after a configurable period of time, there have been no touches on the screen, the MediaCAT will start the in-active playlist.
This allows a touch screen to be dual purposed, with it playing promotional or information content when not in use, but immediately loading interactive touch content as soon as user touches the screen.
The next release of MediaCAT has also had a complete graphics driver overhaul, which not only allows it to support a wider range of hardware, but it also makes better use of existing graphics chipsets - all MediaCAT graphics features can now be used in portrait mode as well as landscape for example. We've found that portrait displays are ideal for static wayfinding screens, so they will be great for interactive touch screen wayfinding systems too!
We are hoping to add some standard touch screen systems to our price list in the very near future. We are currently evaluating a couple of fully embedded touch screens (screens that have the MediaCAT hardware built into them, providing an all in one system) and we also have a couple of OEM partners who are able to offer standard kiosks and bespoke screen mounts for custom projects. If you are interested in an easy to use touch screen system, then please get in contact with us!
