Remapping touchscreen input

**06specv** · 06-25-2009, 12:00 AM

Kinda stumped looking for a utility to do what I'm looking for, thought I'd throw this out to the folks here for ideas.

I have a Lilliput touch screen, installed the latest drivers, basically, the screen works just like a touchpad. So far so good. What I'd like to be able to do (preferably on an app by app basis), is to be able to remap portions of the screen to specific keyboard keys. I found a program called SideTrack that will do this with the trackpad, but of course it didn't recognize my touchscreen as a trackpad, and so did nothing.

What I'm after is a way to be able to use the Front Row application with the touch screen, it doesn't use mouse input at all. I'd like to be able to tap the top of the screen for an up arrow, bottom for a down arrow, center of the screen for a return, upper left corner for Esc, etc.

My other option at this point is to use some form of USB gamepad to do these functions, but I don't really have any convenient place for such a control pad to be mounted in my ride.

Anyone else in a similar situation? I've looked at all the Mac front ends out there, but really Front Row is exactly what I need, if I could just make it work.

**scatebase** · 06-26-2009, 01:05 PM

A while back i saw this: http://www.kusnetz.net/prius/

There is a script that he made that does exactly what your looking for, but it was made to work with the touchscreen that comes with a prius. You might be able to tweak it to make it work for you.

**06specv** · 06-27-2009, 12:14 AM

Unfortunately, for me at least, that screen used a serial connection for the input, and not USB. Straight serial input I'd be able to deal with, I've done some similar work in the past.

Right now I'm researching how I might be able to read the USB input directly from the Lilliput, but my programming skills are a bit rusty. Hoping I might stumble across something similar on the web that I can adapt.

**sonneboz** · 06-28-2009, 09:25 PM

Didn't someone already do this on here? I could have sworn I read through a thread where someone hooked up a serial reader to see what the screen was sending, and then just changed it to his liking.

**06specv** · 07-02-2009, 02:59 PM

If there's a way to directly read the USB input for the touchscreen, it's certainly eluding me...

**Bugbyte** · 07-02-2009, 03:37 PM

Eh, I thought they wrote an app that put a set of navigation arrows in transparency on the screen. It ran in front of Front Row and you could tap the arrows and it would send them to Front Row. It didn't survive the transition to Leopard and the developer has left the building.

I think you may be able to do this using an Applescript app.

**06specv** · 07-02-2009, 04:05 PM

Yes, found that here, no updates in some while, not working with Leopard. I've just sent an email to the author, maybe something is in the works.

I'm sure that I could script some controls via AppleScript, that isn't the issue, my hurdle is finding some simple way to read the touchscreen without having to learn Cocoa programming.

**Bugbyte** · 07-02-2009, 05:14 PM

Maybe you don't have room for a controller, but I found that a Griffin Powermate in one cupholder worked flawlessly when mapped to key commands in Front Row.

Amp provides slightly larger and more readable text and video and is designed to be controlled by a Powermate, like FrontRow.