Remote touchscreen control of iPhone via serial port - Need hardware help! - Page 2

hyperclimber · 04-17-2009, 03:23 PM

I think I'll recede on the BT. But I have no use for A2DP, but HID would be nice...

I did a little searching about the samsung small touchscreen they've got adverted on the gumstix site. Samsung does make larger screens with very similar specs, maybe we could talk to the gumstix people and see if they're controller would work with some of these other samsung screens.

I read your other post on the video lag issue. I guess that was a concern for me in the beginning and why I was thinking of going the hardwired route. I think this could be the make it or break it of the project. For maps and music we really don't need a lot of video power, but if I was going to put in a nice monitor in the car, I would want to watch movies especially since I do a lot of long distance driving. (please no comments on the dangers of driving while watching movies... there isn't anything else to do across the states of north dakota, south dakota, montana, nebraska, most of colorado, most of utah, nevada, etc. put it on cruise, put it on auto pilot and turn on the tv)

I just had a thought, do we need to use a full VNC connection? Maybe we could 'fool' the iphone to not sending video but everything else, then use the apple av cable to port video. Or something like that.

I would like to help out in any way that I think I can.

hyperclimber · 04-21-2009, 10:10 PM

Had some new thoughts while looking around for a few days. Would it be possible to have a usb or firewire controller for the iphone? In looking around I found a touchscreen with usb input. Thinking that you could use the apple av cable to then send video and receive input as it has usb I was completely turned off by the fact that the apple av cable's usb is for 'power only'. Making a custom cable wouldn't be very hard. But if we somehow gave the iphone the driver for the usb touchscreen and sent signals to the screen, could we get this to work? I'll do some more looking and see what I come up with.

Any luck with the linux route so far?

Bugbyte · 04-22-2009, 10:36 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by raleel

BugByte, check out my post on the other thread. Essentially, I propose exactly as you do. I might suggest a GumStix, as it's smaller and really designed for this work. http://www.gumstix.com/ is the site and they have a number of these small computers. some with built in wifi, and complete power specs.

huh, i hadn't seen it before, but they even have an output for a small touchscreen. I think I see my project forming very quickly.

They look okay, although a little expensive. The Sheeva is $99 and I have an old wireless router laying around.

Still, it doesn't really matter what you use. I'm more interested in trying to get the solution to work. It can always be refined later.

Anyhow, the Sheeva should be here any day. I'll let you know when it arrives. Hopefully, we can collaborate on the solution.

lalypaly · 06-16-2009, 05:34 PM

Guys we all are on the same ship, just that I am not that techy as you all are. I wanted to extend my Iphone screen on a larger touch screen, and then I happened to read your threads.
Check this video that is recently added on youtube, I am sure you will be happy to see the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GewD78F-5o

hyperclimber · 06-18-2009, 01:53 AM

looks pretty cool! but the problem is that it appears to be running native. who knows, maybe this could be the ticket to all our problems... but just thinking about what I want (as so it seems you have a similar idea lalypaly) that I want to plug my iphone into the 30pin connector and then not have to use the iphone in the car but have this external monitor take control over the iphone. if you notice in the youtube video, they don't have an iphone in sight, they are just running the iphone OS on the computer. what we want to be able to do is use the iphone as the computer and port out video to an external source as well as use the touch features from the external source to control the computer. while this seems easy when we are so accustomed to plugging in a keyboard and a monitor to a computer, it is rather complicated because the iphone was not designed for this.

that said, i just had an idea... the problem with the VNC video lag was processor speed, right? i haven't looked at the 3gS in detail quite yet, and i plan on getting one in the near future. if, perhaps, the 3gS could process fast enough, the video lag could greatly be reduced. thereby we would only need to have a simple linux box with an adhoc like bugbyte's been talking about and video (which was my concern) wouldn't be so bad.

bugbyte, have you had time to play around with stuff yet?

Bugbyte · 06-18-2009, 11:08 AM

I've been working a LOT with the Sheeva plug -the embedded Linux device. It is a great little device but it doesn't have much in the way of video capability.

I've been focusing on learning Linux, loading a web server and php and mySQL, and lately I've been learning how to compile programs for the ARM chip that's on it.

I'm pretty close to getting OBDGPSlogger by chunkyks to work on it. I got it to compile, and I also got gpsd to compile. I've been working to find out how to get usb to serial to work on it. That will make the link between any FTDI serial to usb device, including XM, Fusion Brain, OBD Elm327, NMEA GPS devices and so forth.

Fortunately, there's been a lot of interest in the Linux community and at least one other much more knowledgeable person than I now has a Sheeva plug and is working with it.

I'm sure we can solve some of the technical issues with accessing devices via Sheeva os the iPhone can control stuff on the OUTPUT side.

On the INPUT side (i.e. touchscreen), I've temporarily tabled the issue of the touchscreen for awhile since the new 3.0 software seems to give more options for that and who knows, maybe a vendor based solution will appear in the very near future.

HiJackZX1 · 06-18-2009, 11:56 AM

I know I'm not really sure how the iPhone works, but I am signed up to a site called Alibia or something along those lines. Its a Chinese site for whole salers and one thing that keeps popping up is a iPhone replacement touchscreen. I do recall that the iPhone uses a multitouch panel, but it looks like its simply a plug with a adapter that plugs into a control board on the phone. Now my idea requires modding, but what if you can take apart the phone, make that connector on the board a dual type connection. One for the existing touch panel, then the other for the touch panel on the large screen. That way your doing a direct connection, minus the middle man. The only obstacle I can see is that the fact that its a multi touch type screen may be an issue, I don't know if it will work on a regular panel. Unless it uses a regular panel, and its the control board that actually makes it multi touch. There is also a chance maybe they now sell 7, 8 and what not sized multitouch panels, I can imagine if they did its so so expensive.

kandyman676 · 06-24-2009, 12:28 AM

*cough cough*
http://www.mimomonitors.com/

USB 7" LCD monitors...supports MAC OS X :-)

cgalpin · 06-24-2009, 08:03 AM

They definitely looks like the leading candidate but they only work with intel based macs right now which rules out the ipod/iphone/apple tv etc as well. See their FAQ page.

helllordkb · 07-23-2009, 04:12 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

I know I'm not really sure how the iPhone works, but I am signed up to a site called Alibia or something along those lines. Its a Chinese site for whole salers and one thing that keeps popping up is a iPhone replacement touchscreen. I do recall that the iPhone uses a multitouch panel, but it looks like its simply a plug with a adapter that plugs into a control board on the phone. Now my idea requires modding, but what if you can take apart the phone, make that connector on the board a dual type connection. One for the existing touch panel, then the other for the touch panel on the large screen. That way your doing a direct connection, minus the middle man. The only obstacle I can see is that the fact that its a multi touch type screen may be an issue, I don't know if it will work on a regular panel. Unless it uses a regular panel, and its the control board that actually makes it multi touch. There is also a chance maybe they now sell 7, 8 and what not sized multitouch panels, I can imagine if they did its so so expensive.

I think something along these lines would work best but it would need to be done from the dock connector. I don't think I or most people wanna pull apart their phone for something like this. Most touch screens will use USB for the touchscreen control and vga just for the picture.
What you need to have is a function or feature in the iPhone OS to respond to touch screen controls coming at the phone from the dock connector. This feature would need to be done at the phones OS layer and would require apple to do this. The other option is with a background app that the user loads that stays running in the background (like they planned on allowing apps to run in the background on the iPhone OS for a while now...)

The other option that might work that I can see someone here in the forums like I am working on this myself, is a dongle device running on some embedded hardware like the gumstix that simple controls your touch screen and passed it a video signal from the dock connector and that also converts the usb touch screen connection to signals the phone would think are the input variables mapped to the built-in touch screens cocoa touch values.

Those are some ideas though, im working on something like the last one, but taking time.

DarkStar02 · 08-04-2009, 12:08 AM

Any updates?

Bugbyte · 08-04-2009, 02:22 AM

Nope, sorry. I keep looking for some cool Bluetooth device innovations, but nothing so far. I'm a little disappointed!

DarkStar02 · 11-05-2009, 01:57 AM

Bump.

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