Sunday, October 9, 2005
DIY: Readers Inwall LCD Touchscreen
Related Entries: DIY
Mavromatic reader, Michael, sent in his modern version of my DIY: Inwall 15” LCD touchscreen. The screen is a 15-inch elo touchscreen he bought off of ebay. The touchscreen is located in his basement, which is his game room (mame arcade-DIY project, pool table, darts, air hockey). Michael wanted the ability to play my digital music collection “in a cool way when hanging with friends” — which he certainly achieved.
As for the finish on the frame, he searched for a laminate that matches a stainless steel look…
he was about to give up and go with black until he found that Formica had a line called Decometal. Decometal is actually
a thin sheet of metal that is treated so it can bend and bond like
regular laminate. He also tried a sample of FXsheeting from Alsacorp but it was too shinny and did not look like real stainless. It was close, but Decometal is the real deal. Working with Decometal is difficult (he advises anyone to attempt this to have some skills in laminating and heat gun use), but it’s well worth it in
end.For mounting, he used a standard vesa bracket. Ran 100 ft of vga, and serial cable to an office PC located upstairs. For the audio, he wired from the pc to a A/V receiver and ran it to the basement inwall speakers (150ft of wire). He also ran about 400 ft of dedicated power line for the different components and hooked up the office PC to a RF timer switch available which is available at smarthome.com. The RF device comes with a remote so he can be in the basement and still turn on his PC — very cool. He tried a hack with a wireless doorbell and Wake-lan line, but it looked liked “crap” and had no range at all, so he recommends “RF all the way”. To power the touch screen, he used a standard light switch mounted below the touch screen. The switch is hard-wired to a smart-strip that turns on the touch screen and AV receiver. He is experimenting with the RF code on the remote to see if I can devise a way to turn on the PC as well with the smart-strip.
Since he just mounted and connected the screen this Saturday, he hasn’t had a chance to load any front-end software on the computer yet. He’s got a few options, but has yet to select one.
Michael, your frame looks very clean and professional — one of a kind. You should be very proud of your great work!
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