Alternative Lower Cost Touch Screen PC's?

Hi

Any suggestions about available color touch screen PC based systems (10" - 15") for use with Cbus applications. Preferably with low power consumption, LAN (Wifi if possible) several Usb ports and Rs232, built-in speakers, mic and Camera?

 

Wall mount an Asus EeeTop PC ET2203T

 

This one works for me

Have a look at post number 16 in this thread to see the way I jumped.

It works very well and I was very impressed with the support offered by the Wordsworth guys.

 

Thanks Guys

Will investigate the Asus EeeTop and Wordsworth options.

I have used Panel PC's from Advantech for Scada based systems with no problems and support is very good. Their Panel PC's prices have been expensive in the past, but they have come down considerably - certainly a lot cheaper that the Color Touch options. I think the 15" screen size is now about 1/2 the cost of a color touch option and looks really great.

I have also noticed but not used the iEi Panel PC's from soanar ($1700 for 15") which may also be worth investigating. (anyone used these?)

The Color Touch Screens don't seem to have value for the money and you can't run other applications. I have a number of projects comming up that require Energy Monitoring and Video for security so the panel PC looks the way to go. There are a number of products around for video, but a good energy monitoring solution is hard to find. I have been looking into a new cbus energy monitoring system from synctek in melbourne which should be available soon and their system can be run from a panel pc on windows XP. I'm finding a lot of customers now want energy monitoring and video security to be available on their touch screens.

Panel PC solutions running windows seems the best way to go these days as we are finding that customers want to add more and more functionality to the home automation systems - and homegate is simply not designed to accomplish all this by itself so you need to able to integrate other applications to do all this stuff.

 

Touch Screens

• Acer Aspire 1820PT 11.6" 2GB 250GB - Win 7 HP - Touch
• Acer All-in-One Multi-Touch Z5610
  
• The POS 660 Series http://www.flytech.com/pddetail.php?cid=4&id=19 Comes without the card swipe!
  
• http://www.ili.co.nz/ They have controlled C-bus via interface. (Tell them I set you! )

Colin Smith
1 Touch Automation

 

I guess the new touch facilities in Windows 7 may change the PC landscape a little - controlling CBus using "surface" anyone?

As has been said on here before, I think the C-Touch vs PC debate is to a large extent driven by how much support you will need to (or are prepared to) provide to your customer going forward.

I have all sort of extra applications running in my panel PC - and have some fairly complex stuff in Homegate too (eg the Squeezebox controller mentioned somewhere on another thread in here).

BUT if the installation was in my IT-illiterate mother's house it would probably be a C-Touch. Worse, if it was my mother-in-law - she believes herself to be PC-capable, so definitely either a C-Touch or a very expensive support agreement!

 

I have similar Inlaws - the support is terrible!

I have successfully used Panel PC's on a number of occasions without much trouble or support required. The major problem with windows based Home Automation systems (whether Panel PC or not) is allowing access to the internet - this is where major problems can occur?
I do not allow automatic windows updates and disable programs that access the internet to download updates etc -- they can cause problems and microsoft updates can be a big pain?

In installations where the customer wants internet access then I specifically state that any call out support is subject to additional service chargers.

However I agree that access to other applications, including the internet is a must these days - everybody wants it!

 

Touch Screen

I use 3M touchscreens and would also like to use homegate with other apps on my projects, but as you say it doesn't allow this integration and if it did
I would also use the C-touch if it was all locked down.
Imagine a home with say 3 or 4 C-touch units and you can not use the screens for security monitoring expensive machine that does very little.

DDirk

 

in the past 12 months probably had over a dozen serious enquiries for energy metering to be shown on touch screens. I think this would be larger if I had something to offer, some sort of definite solution that customers can take up - if I had it I could sell it!

I have installed a number of these clip-on centa-meter devices but most customers have not been impressed because they dont appear to be accurate enough and dont provide graphical display of energy use and they look really cheap like a kitchen timer. Over a few days/weeks the accuracy starts falling off - I think its because they dont take into account line voltage changes and the errors pile after a while.

If a customer is willing to spend $15,000+ an C-Bus Home Automation system then they want something good not a cheap looking add-on, most want some sort of graphical display that shows energy use over time that they can relate to billing and also to see what appliances are the major uses for their situation. So definitely there is a need for a multiple circuit energy monitoring system that can be seperated out for lighting, power, air conditioning etc.

I mainly do units and appartments and the builders are also asking for energy metering to offer customers when they sell off the plan with a cbus home automation systems - video security and theatre control is another popular ask.

The only energy monitoring system that I have seen so far that can probably do these things with C-Bus is a new energy meter from syntek, but its not quite ready yet.

 

Most screen drivers have brightness control and once setup for the application there is really no need for auto brightness, I normall set screen saver to 30 minutes if needed.

 

Graphing energy usage is very easy:
1. Get hold of a current clamp or other sensor with an analogue output
2. Connect the output to a General Input Unit set to broadcast the data on the Measurement Application
3. Use Colour C-Touch to plot the measured data

 

Graphing Current is not an energy measurement you would need a propper energy transducer to measure energy. I doubt that feeding energy as an analogue signal (if one was available) would work as the range is limited, feeding a power transducer signal may work if the colour c-touch could integrate it over time?

Then again I don't think the colour c-touch or homegate has the ability to store and recall the energy signal over different time periods and to display what energy was used last month etc?

I am not sure if the colour C-touch or homegate can store and accumulate an energy signal - is that possible?

 

You are quite right. I am so used to people saying "energy" when they actually mean power/current, I assumed you meant the same.

No, it would not work all that well.

It would be very easy to write some logic code to integrate the power over time and store it in a user system IO variable for display. Using a User System IO variable would also mean that it gets stored in the project file and will not be lost if there is a power failure.

Doing things this way would be less accurate than using a proper energy meter (particularly if your current meter is not true RMS or if your voltage deviates much form nominal), but it should be more than good enough for the purposes of looking at trends.

 

Darren, are system IO variables set to specific data types ( eg floating point values) and can they be set up as large arrays to store power or energy data from energy meters at particular times?

And then recall and display the array data as a graph plot ?

maybe this could be used as an energy meter for homegate displays - but then again maybe too much work/trouble - it would probably be more cost effective to use a dedicated energy meter system like daky says?

 

I don't think homegate can do arrays.
Better off saving the energy meter data in some sort of file or data base?

 

Yes.

They are not really designed for that. As Nick said, you can do arrays in logic then save the data to a file if you need.

 

The best option would be to have a real time kWh measurement (obviously take the current reading and multiply it out to the hour) and a running total for both the day and then the week.

Similar to the car fuel usage panels etc.

You could even have a forcast of monthly or quartely usage - and if there was an input in the cbus piced setup we could put in the c/kWh and then it could even forcast the bill given it would know the past, present and guage for future usage.

Sound like a bit of work but heh - given people are looking at using new plaforms that Clipsal wouldn't profit from surely someone could be given the task to promote advances in their product.