NextWindow Touch Screen Working on Linux

This page explains how to get a NextWindow touch frame working under Linux on the X Windows system. This has so far been tested on the Knoppix (based on Debian) distribution.

Requirements

Linux 2.6 kernel series

evdev module compiled in the kernel or loaded as a module

Generic Event Device Input Driver installed. Was available here

Instructions

• Once you have met all the requirements, you will need to find out which event device the Touch Frame is (the evdev module outputs events on /dev/input/eventX where X is the number of the specific device).

  • Run evstatus on all the /dev/input/eventX devices until you find the eventX that corresponds to the Touch Frame. The right one will have "Nextwindow Nextwindow Touchscreen" as the Input device name.

    For example:

       root@box:/home/daniel# evstatus /dev/input/event2
                            Input driver version is 1.0.0
                            Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x0 product 0xffff version 0x100
                            Input device name: "Nextwindow Nextwindow Touchscreen"
                          Supported events:
                          Event type 0 (SYN)
                          Event type 1 (KEY)
                          Event code 272 (LEFT)
                          Event code 273 (RIGHT)
                          Event code 274 (MIDDLE)
                          Event type 3 (ABS)
                          Event code 0 (X)
                          Value  21731
                          Min        0
                          Max    32767
                          Event code 1 (Y)
                          Value  16318
                          Min        0
                          Max    32767
                          Event code 40 (MISC)
                          Value     0
                          Min        0
                          Max       1
                    

    This also provides the max/min x and y parameters.

Now that you have established the event device the Touch Frame is on, you need to modify the XF86Config-4 file to include an InputDevice section for the Touch Frame and also make reference to the InputDevice in the ServerLayout section (see example below).

Example XF86Config-4 excerpt

    Section "InputDevice"
      Identifier   "NW Touchscreen"
      Driver       "evdev"
      Option       "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
      Option       "Device"                "/dev/input/event2"
      Option       "MinX"                  "0"
      Option       "MaxX"                  "32767"
      Option       "MinY"                  "0"
      Option       "MaxY"                  "32767"
    EndSection

   Section "ServerLayout"
      Identifier   "Default Layout"
      Screen       "Default Screen"
      InputDevice  "Generic Keyboard"
      InputDevice  "NW Touchscreen"
      InputDevice  "PSAUX Mouse"
      InputDevice  "USB Mouse"
   EndSection