Hi all.
I mentioned a little while ago that once I succeeded in getting snow leopard onto my eeepc, the next step would be to turn it into a touch tablet. Well I'm half way through this journey, with some success and some failure. Mostly the success is that the touch input works almost flawlessly with snow leopard. Once connected, the OS detects it automatically and works however is a little out of calibration (there is no default way of calibrating it in SL). Luckily there are drivers/apps out there to do this and once installed/calibrated, the result is pretty positive. I've attached a video to give you a idea of the concept and how it works so far (bear in mind I haven't properly calibrated the screen yet).
Click on image below to see video, excuse the amateur footage:
Now. There are some issues. Firstly the cable for the monitor is short so folding back on itself isn't possible to create a tablet form so I'm hunting currently for a longer one. The next issue is when restarting the eeepc, the calibration goes haywire (seems to think I am touching an area of the screen and holds the cursor here, when I touch somewhere else it move there but once realeased goes back to that initial corner). I can fix this by removing the power and battery, disconnecting the touch screen then holding down the power button for a bit. I'm still looking into this, think prehaps it is a connection or power distribution issue? I read some posts where people have soldered the touch screen hub directly to the motherboard to fix any input issues. My soldering skills are like that of an over caffeinated junkie so I might practice elsewhere till I've mastered that.
For those wanting to look at doing this mod but just as a touchscreen enabled eeepc, I can give you a few pointers.
1. Touchscreen purchase. I bought two during this mod. The first one was glass and ended up being a f@#$% to remove once double side taped to the LCD screen. Ended up cracking it beyond repair, so opted for the flexible plastic ones you can get from ebay. I think fidohub sell these as well, pretty sure they were the same screen.
2. DON'T install SL yet. I found installing it AFTER I installed the touchscreen made the OS locate the hardware component out of the box.
3. Follow one of the many guides online in removing your eeepc's external shell to rig up the touch screen panel. Anyone wanting a quick link I used this one for some parts which is also from the fidohub website.
4. Once up and running, I used this link to download the right driver. I was pleasantly suprised they had updated their drivers for SL.
5. I did the 25 point calibration to get the best results, after which I had a fully functioning touchscreen eeepc running SL.
If I can get this set up the way I want, the next step will be looking at getting a custom case made so it doesn't resemble a mess of parts and electrical tape. I will upload more content once I have finished putting this together and so forth on my journey on creating the ultimate SL tablet.
Thanks all for reading and special thanks to ebay seller visualtouchworld for the great touchscreen, fidohub for the great guide and Roby82 for an excelent tutorial on getting SL onto your eeepc!
Coreyd
UPDATE:
Through an idea of my partners, we made a shell for the device out of lego of all things. Just a proof of concept but looks and functions a hell of a lot better than the mess I had before. Photo's below.