[JoshK]

Wonder if any of you guys have thought of adding a dedicated touch screen to your computer based system?   Not sure if these even exist and whether there is software to control everything, but I was sort of thinking along the lines of a DIY sonos type system.

I am using a Sonore Sig Rendu.   I was just thinking it would be really cool to have some sort of touch screen added to control playback. 

[JRace]

You mean like a tablet or smart phone?

[randytsuch]

Squeezebox duet had a slick little remote.

It wasn't touch screen, but it was nice having dedicated buttons for play/pause, volume, ff, rev, etc.

[JoshK]

You mean like a tablet or smart phone?

Yeah obviously a tablet would work as well.   If using a touch screen though, I could use my vortexbox to run the app, or one of those little XBMC boxes.

[randytsuch]

Were you thinking of using a Pi or an arduino as a controller?

There must be documented projects from people who have done this.

[Scott F.]

Hey Josh,

I did it but I'm not sure it's exactly what you are looking to achieve. Here's a pic or two;




 

Basically what I'm doing us using an ASUS all in one with a touch screen. This computer only has JRiver running beside the OS and Team Viewer. I use JRiver Gizmo so I can control remotely but I also use Team Viewer so I can log in and control from my computer back at my desk. Attached is 12TB of regular and HiRez files on an external drive (with 12TB of back up).

One of the big reasons for doing this, besides making it a truly dedicated music server, I wanted to see the album art from across the room. Sort of like spinning vinyl and displaying the album cover near the turntable.

It worked pretty well, plus its cool. Can't speak to the difference in sounds between the ASUS and one of the purpose built audio computers. No doubt they sound better but at this point in my audiophile evolution, I don't much care.

[JRace]

Yeah obviously a tablet would work as well.   If using a touch screen though, I could use my vortexbox to run the app, or one of those little XBMC boxes.

I must be missing something.

Do you mean use a computer as your streamer, and use a touchscreen attached to the computer to control it?

Just not sure why a tablet would not be used instead?
 

In my system I use a tablet (iPad) to control my PC's foobar.
I also use the same tablet to control a Raspberry Pi (with Rune),
and to control my OpenElec XBMC computer.

While touch screens are neat, they are really just dumb tablets that need to be wired to the PC.

[JRace]

Were you thinking of using a Pi or an arduino as a controller?

There must be documented projects from people who have done this.

PIs for audio are best setup headless with a tablet to control.

You can get a really cheap Raspberry Pi touch screen, however the audio-centric OC's are designed to be run headless.

[JoshK]

I guess what I'm after is something like Scott has and I am considering the possibilities versus a tablet.  Both are cool, but I have a tendency to not recharge the tablet when it is needed and my ipad's screen is pretty busted at the moment (can fix though).