so. I have an old laptop that I don't use anymore. Plugged half the memory into my daughter's second-hand, first computer....figured it's useless to me now, but still runs linux distros with great ease, so idea!
Project time:
I want to turn this laptop into a home-made tablet. Because reasons.
What do I need to give touch-screen capability? Are there mod cases on the market to stuff components into new form factors, or will i need to design a case on my own?
Need tips, hints, and advice. Cost is not an issue, because this is for fun and experience. I would rather put $600 into this project than buy a new iPad, for example.
>mods
Yes, there are.
>out-of-the-box touchscreens ready to use
No, there aren't.
You've got two viable options.
Option 1. Apply a touchscreen kit to the front of your existing display.
Manufacturers exist that offer these sorts of solution. One I've seen used in the industry is called EloTouch. They apply a glass plate to a monitor and provide you with a Serial (RS-232)/USB controller that you plug into your PC. With some clever hacking you can hide this in the bezel. It's kind of a big device (4u) though.
Option 2: Get a USB Touch Monitor and replace your actual monitor with it. One (and the only) example of this is the Lenovo LT1423p. It's a 13.3" 1600x900 touch monitor, which connects over USB 3.0, running proprietary drivers written by DisplayLink.
The last option, which is unviable for basically everyone, is to replace your laptop display with an iPad display. People have designed boards to interface these things to LVDS or what-have-you. The only problem is that no one has a clue how to control the touch sensor.
some good info to start with, thanks. I will look into those items!
I've also seen things like "digitizers" and glass panels, but have never really seen those things explained.
http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=&SearchText=touchscreen
could I use these to make a workaround?
A digitizer is the 'glass' part on the front of a touchscreen. They are essentially the same technology as a laptop touchpad, just a lot thinner and transparent - If you have a broken cellphone, you can usually separate the digitizer from the lcd unless that's what's broken. Looking closely you can sometimes identify the controller chip - the Xperia z1 compact for example uses a synaptics controller, which im hoping to decipher and feed to an arduino for giggles (ordered the wrong part last time I dropped it, oops! Might as well learn something from it!). So a tablet digitizer *if* it can be made serial/ps2/usb readable would probably work for you.
