Panel PC FAQ

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Enclosure Ventilation

Be sure to have adequate ventilation for the system. All modern/high-speed computers that are in use 24 hours a day require proper ventilation.

The critical part is to keep the LCD panel under 50 Celsius or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Other components inside the system can withstand more heat than the LCD panel, but not to the extreme.

Depending on your design plan, you can choose an active ventilation (electric fan) or passive ventilation (sufficient vent holes) in your enclosure/chassis.

The KS150 and faster models each has an internal chassis fan and a power supply fan - so, be sure to circulate the air or route this warm air out of your enclosure or chassis.

For a 15" system, you can estimate the power to be around 55 to 70 Watts. This is the amount of energy or heat your enclosure/design has to dissipate but some of it is radiated out of the front thru the LCD panel and touchscreen.

If your equipment is used in a dusty or oily environment, eg. in some factories, you will need to have an air filter in the enclosure or ventilation system to prevent the dust or grime to clog the fans and cause the system to overheat and malfunction. This filter must be inspected or replaced at a regular interval or as necessary as part of your equipment's maintenance.

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Touchscreen or Bezel Seal

If you do not plan to seal your front bezel around the viewing/display area, you can skip this section.

If you plan to seal your front bezel around the viewing/display area, be sure to use the Elo Volara foam, or an equivalent closed-cell and non-gas/chemical-emitting type of foam (available from other suppliers). Volara is an Elo trademark.

This foam typically must not be wider than a quarter inch (less foam pressing on the surface-wave sensors at the edge of the glass), and the thickness of this foam can be 1/16" or 1/8".

The adhesive side of the foam must stick to your bezel, and not the touchscreen/glass.

Do not use a generic-type or automotive-type foam which may cause the touchscreen not to properly work -- the touch points may be totally out of calibration and cannot be recalibrated, or there will be dead zones where the touchscreen does not work, or the entire touchscreen simply will not work at all. (To debug, just loosen or remove your bezel and re-test the touchscreen functions.)

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Tips and Tricks

Ever needed to add one or few mechanical buttons/switches to your system so that your software can recognize it and perform something...? Just use the Game/MIDI port found on our computer systems! Then get your custom software to poll this game port for this button press. However, do not poll or check that port too often because it takes up a lot of processor/CPU resources. Just poll or check it once every 0.25 seconds or so. Use a software interrupt to set the time and not by a bunch of timing loops! You can easily add up to 4 buttons or switches per system -- all that without any custom circuit board or any fancy logic chips -- just use switches, cables, DB-15 connector and some solder. (You can also do some simple not-much-precision A-to-D conversion on that analog game port too but we just won't talk about it!)

How do people actually calibrate a touchscreen more accurately? Answer: Not with a finger! Use the eraser-end of a pencil to touch the calibration targets on the screen. An eraser has a smaller surface area compared to our finger press. During calibration, it registers the touch point more precisely. You may have to touch somewhere other than the center of the calibration target, but always start by using an eraser tip. After you're done, you can use your finger to touch the buttons/etc on the screen as usual. (Some companies will actually try to sell you a very expensive calibration tool, but an eraser works just as well and is more readily available everywhere!)

How do we right-click using the touchscreen? I suppose we all found out the right-side finger doesn't work for this purpose! What we have to do is go into Control Panel and into the Elo or Microtouch touchscreen utility/software. Somewhere in there, enable the right-click feature and an extra button or icon will show up on the screen. Touch this button/icon first and the next item you touch will be a right-click!

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Software Drivers

You should always use the software drivers provided on Driver CD. This is because the board and chipset revision, and its software driver all match each other. This disc contains drivers for the main chipset, video, audio, network, PC Card and other components, and they are available for various operating systems. Look for this Driver CD in the same shipping box as the system that you have purchased.

Caution: It is important to note which brand of touchscreen before you re-load the drivers.
    - In the K-series products, the resistive touchscreen is the 3M/MicroTouch brand.
    - All capacitive touchscreens we supply are the 3M/MicroTouch brand.
    - All surface wave touchscreens we supply are the Elo brand.
    - The Elo driver works for both resistive and surface wave types (Elo brand).
    - The 3M/MicroTouch driver works for both resistive and capacitive types (3M/MT brand).

Please note that the touchscreen controller in all our systems is the serial type and it's always located at COM3.

Elo Resistive and Surface-wave Touchscreen Driver (for Windows XP). This driver is for the Microsoft Windows 2000, XP Home and XP Professional operating systems, and it is for both the Elo Resistive and Surface Wave types of touchscreens. Run the XpSerial.exe file and various files will unzip into a new subdirectory (C:\EloXpSerial\) on your local HDD. Next, go into this C:\EloXpSerial\ subdirectory and run SetupElo.exe from there. Then the touchscreen driver will begin to install. Select the COM3 serial port when prompted by the software/driver because the touchscreen controller is on COM3 in our systems. When you restart, that software will ask you to touch 3 points/targets on the screen during the calibration process.

Elo touchscreen drivers for other operating systems are available at the Elo website (www.elotouch.com). Just remember to select the serial type, and the controller is on COM3 in our computer systems.

3M/MicroTouch touchscreen drivers are available on the Driver CD that was delivered with the system.