Building A Touchscreen XBMC Setup With The Raspberry Pi

rapsberry-pi-based-touchscreen-xbmc-tablet

[Andrei Istodorescu] has been hard at work building a 7″ touch-screen rig which runs XBMC. It may be upside-down, but the Raspberry Pi board which is front and center is still easily recognizable. There’s a lot of stuff connected to it in order to pull this off, and even more software configuration. But as you can see in the clip after the break he did get it working!

The screen is an eGalaxy 7″ touch sensitive module he picked up on eBay. It sounds like it was meant for a backup camera in the dashboard of a car. He compiled his own Linux kernel to add support for the screen. It uses HDMI for the video interface with the driver board, and the touchscreen connects to one of the USB ports. The rest of the setup involves compiling XBMC with touchscreen support and calibrating the screen to accurately sense input.

29 thoughts on “Building A Touchscreen XBMC Setup With The Raspberry Pi

      1. In the post, below the pictue, you can see the estimated price, which was, at the momemnt of building:
        30$(Raspberry PI) + 80$(display with touchscreen and touchscreen controller) + 2$(hdmi to hdmi) = 112$.
        You should add the SD card(which I don’t know how much it costs) and the power adaptors(which I also don’t know how much they cost). I already had these parts around my house.

  1. I got that exact hdmi display, touchscreen controller and hdmi display pcb from a Chinese eBay seller for about 36 GBP delivered.

    The resolution is low but quality is okay if not a bit washed out. I’m in the process of coming up with an enclosure because it’s very delicate with those ribbon cables.

    I used a 0.15m hdmi cable from cpc (Farnell) instead of the coupler.

    The touchscreen worked well on windows so I’m glad to see someone got it working on the pi

    1. I bought a similar screen, and the resolution is great. The image is very nice when the Pi is operating at the native resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. You must have a different display, and/or a scaled image.

  2. I love XMBC but am looking for recommendations on touchscreen compatible skins…. I know there are a lot out there, but am looking for one that is really good.

    Also sidenote…. whats the best way to use XBMC as a home jukebox (while still having XBMC remote work)

  3. You could use something like this for Home Automation, have a Raspberry PI mounted to the back of the screen, and build this into a wall, to control lights, home audio and a bunch of other things – Might be something I may try….

  4. This is a great idea – Gave me a idea to use this in a Home Automation install, having the Raspberry PI mounted to the rear of the screen, and coding it to activate things like lights, music, heating…. possibilities are endless.

  5. Thanks for that Andrei.
    I’m using a USB soundcard, I have disabled the PI sound device. I get sound from mplayer and mpg123 but not from xbmc videos or music. I have audio 2.0 set in xbmc. What is the default output device you have set? In the PC version of xbmc there is a option to change the sound device but in your build there isn’t :(. My device is card 0…
    Thanks for your good work

    Graeme

  6. Stumbled upon this old HaD post loking for info on that touch screen controller…. I got an old 10″ intel atom netbook and wanted to create a little touchscreen media player for my car. essentially take it apart and add in a 10in touch panel (found here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/281199397174), remove the keyboard and make a tablet.

    anyways, im pretty sure my touch screen uses that same controller. does anyone know if it will auto detect in ubuntu etc, or will i need to rebuild the kernel as Andrei did? any tips are welcome.

  7. Could you use any touchscreen to connect to a raspberry pi? ie could you dismantle an old phone/ebook with a touch screen and adapt it to use with a paspberry pi? And if so what additional parts would you need?

  8. I have a question please.. On the controller board what is the name of the 4 wire adapter that goes from the black plug on the board to the 4 flat wire connection on the lcd screen? i have an lcd screen with the 4 flat wire connection but cannot find another controller board that will accept it without having some sort of an adapter. Thanks in advance.

  9. Hello Andrei. Great work, and thanks for your helpful examples! I have ordered components to duplicate your nice system. I’ll be using audio from HDMI with my Alpine PXA-H701 audio processor (especially for DD, DTS 5.1 audio).

    Question: how are you handling shutting down the Raspberry Pi when turning off the ignition?

    I saw one solution here: http://www.mausberrycircuits.com/collections/car-power-supply-switches/products/2a-car-supply-switch

    Thanks!

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