What to display on a touchscreen in an open area

by **cioffij** on Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:25 pm

I've been thinking about what should be displayed on my touchscreen as sort of a screensaver.

NOT to save the screen, mind you, that's not necessary. But rather to add tot he coolness factor.

Things that come to mind:

- photographs or slide show
- weather map (live?)
- security camera view (I don't have one)
- news ticker or news of some sort (for people with ADD)

Anyone got any other ideas? What to you display on yours.

JC

by **bmblank** on Mon Jan 08, 2007 3:36 pm

Most of those things would be cool. Only problem is lag would interfere with most of those. I haven't heard of anybody who got a ticker going on a soft client yet.. It's kinda a shame, cause I like the ticker idea. The weather I think would be a little bit slow.

by **Marbles_00** on Mon Jan 08, 2007 3:59 pm

Buddabing's Now Playing screen is cool. You could set it up with an XEvent script and have it run as a screensaver. If you have multiple zones, then you could set it up to display what's playing in each zone. That's what I did for my skin.

by **bmblank** on Mon Jan 08, 2007 8:56 pm

The problem with the now playing is what if you're not playing anything???

by **Marbles_00** on Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:13 pm

If I recall, it will still go through all the motions, but the album cover and artist/track fields just aren't filled in. You could add an image to indicate that no music is being played currently if you wanted.

by **Mannyman** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:55 am

I have a motion sensor in the hallway near the touchscreen that wakes the screen up and displays a digital aquarium (makes a nice night light). If the driveway or pathway motion detectors are tripped the sec. cameras come up.

by **bmblank** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 1:10 pm

I like the aquarium idea. Or you could do something like a fireplace, depending on where it is.

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:09 pm

bmblank wrote: Or you could do something like a fireplace, depending on where it is.

And size of it... if its just 7-8" itll prolly look more like peeking hole in crematorium than fireplace

by **bmblank** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:23 pm

IF it's mounted on a wall it'd look good anywyas. It could just be a little flame too. Like a candle or something.

by **sharp_1** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:47 pm

Mannyman wrote:I have a motion sensor in the hallway near the touchscreen that wakes the screen up and displays a digital aquarium (makes a nice night light). If the driveway or pathway motion detectors are tripped the sec. cameras come up.

Motion sensor, what a great idea. I am thinking you would have the screen completely turn off after a set amount of time then the motion sensor would re-establish power when tripped, right? Doesn't really affect use when your in the room with the TS does it? Screen would just stay on at that point. Nice!!!

I like the aquarium idea...but I like the live weather and news ticker even better!!!

by **amblix** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:28 pm

Mannyman wrote:I have a motion sensor in the hallway near the touchscreen that wakes the screen up and displays a digital aquarium (makes a nice night light). If the driveway or pathway motion detectors are tripped the sec. cameras come up.

May I ask how it is your using the sensors to bring up the aquarium and also the cameras as well as what cameras your using lol

by **scottw** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:50 pm

Mannyman wrote:I have a motion sensor in the hallway near the touchscreen that wakes the screen up and displays a digital aquarium (makes a nice night light). If the driveway or pathway motion detectors are tripped the sec. cameras come up.

Is it waking it up or is it like an X10 sensor that activated power back to it??

by **Mannyman** on Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:42 pm

General description in this thread:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5019

I like the candle(s) idea, or actually I think my wife would like it (more important.)

x10 motion detector in hallway wakes and puts Fujitsu 3500 touchscreen to sleep. Flood Light motion detectors over the driveway and front pathway activate the sec. cam system. I bought the cheapest day/night color cameras , 8 240fps cam cctv-dvr-card I could find, everything is from ebay.

by **smarty** on Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:49 am

Manny,
How do you put your 3500 to sleep? I know how to wake it via PowerHome DCC sending it a "space" key, but it would be nice to put it to sleep via a command. What am I missing?

Steve

by **Mannyman** on Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:45 am

Smarty,
I had to check my PH triggers.
Hallway motion detector 'on' wakes up display (instead of sending 'space' I actually use PowerHome to run an AutoIt script on the Fujitsu for educational reasons).
Hallway motion detector 'off' minimizes XLobby, so that the aquarium is visible on the next wake-up. I use RocketDock with an always on top setting to maximize Xlobby when needed.

I actually use the windows screensaver /monitor power/powersettings functionality to put the screen to sleep.
It seemed simpler at the time.

I found the following commands on the web:

To turn off:
SendMessage hWnd, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, ByVal 2&

To turn into energy-saving mode:
SendMessage hWnd, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, ByVal 1&

To turn on:
SendMessage hWnd, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, ByVal -1&

As hWnd you may use handle of any window, for example, Form.hWnd.

Constants:
Const WM_SYSCOMMAND = &H112&
Const SC_MONITORPOWER = &HF170&

If these don't work there's command line freeware out there that does:
http://display.noel-danjou.qarchive.org/
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
HTH,
Manny

PS. let me know what you end up doing in my thread (so as to not hijack this one).
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5019