I recently purchased an ELO 1537L 15-inch open-frame touchmonitor for a project I am doing at work.  I have successfully gotten the touchscreen monitor to work under linux (specifically Scientific 6.x) using USB (I haven’t tried the serial interface).  Plugging in the monitor, it is recognized as a 5020 Surface Capacitive:


19746:Aug 3 02:51:13 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: Product: Elo TouchSystems Surface Capacitive 5020
19747:Aug 3 02:51:13 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Elo TouchSystems
19750:Aug 3 02:51:13 localhost kernel: input: Elo TouchSystems Elo TouchSystems Surface Capacitive 5020 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input7
19751:Aug 3 02:51:13 localhost kernel: generic-usb 0003:04E7:0042.0003: input,hidraw2: USB HID v1.11 Pointer [Elo TouchSystems Elo TouchSystems Surface Capacitive 5020] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1/input0


ELO provides some generic drivers for this device. I first attempted to directly use them and found them to be a complete disaster. The whole configuration was really silly (putting stuff into /etc/opt, are you kidding me?). The elo daemon constantly hung and had to be restarted. Restarting X caused the daemon to stop working, thus the touchscreen stopped working.

I quickly removed these drivers and tried it with the evtouch drivers which I have used for a USB displaylink touchscreen monitor in the past (MIMO). With a few changes to my xorg.conf, the evtouch driver immediately recognized it and I was able to capture touch events. Although the calibration was initially completely off.

Here’s the steps I took to get this working on Scientific Linux 6.0

Install evtouch

Unfortunately, Scientific Linux does not come with the evtouch driver. I have built a 64-bit rpm for Scientific Linux here . If you need a 32-bit version or for another platform (Fedora), download the src rpm and rebuild it (rpmbuild –rebuild xorg-x11-drv-evtouch-0.8.8-1.el6.src.rpm).

Setup Xorg

It is not required to directly edit xorg.conf. Instead, we will create a hal fdi file

We will create an fdi file in /etc/hal/fdi/policy called elo_touchscreen.fdi

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/elo_touchscreen.fdi

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="input.product" contains="Elo TouchSystems, Inc. Elo TouchSystems Surface Capacitive 5010">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">evtouch</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.MinX" type="string">3724</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.MaxX" type="string">318</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.MinY" type="string">3724</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.MaxY" type="string">318</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.SwapX" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.SwapY" type="string">true</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>


If your monitor is slightly different, you will need to get the product id, and replace the match key=”input.product” line in the above file.


$ lshal | grep input.product
input.product = 'Sleep Button' (string)
input.product = 'Power Button' (string)
input.product = 'Macintosh mouse button emulation' (string)
input.product = 'ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse' (string)
input.product = 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard' (string)
input.product = 'Elo TouchSystems, Inc. Elo TouchSystems Surface Capacitive 5010' (string)


You should now be able to unplug and plug your touchscreen back in and have it work without restarting X

Calibration

The MinX,MinY,MaxX,MaxY values are used for calibrating the touchscreen. The evtouch source available on their site comes with a calibration utility. However, I was unable to get this to run. For me I played with the MinX, MaxX, MinY, MaxY values in my xorg.conf until it was close enough. As you can see, I had to mirror both the X and Y values.

Other Drivers

I noticed that Scientific Linux also includes an elographics package: xorg-x11-drv-elographics. I have no idea if this works better or not although I have heard they only work with the serial interface. I have it working with evtouch, so I’m happy. If anyone has tried the elographics and had success, please comment!

One feature I have found blatantly missing is the ability to search active windows in the overview. In overview mode, you first see a live preview of all your windows. But if you’re like me, you have 15 terminals and 10 web browser windows up (I despise tabs!). Typing starts a search, which by default searches: your installed applications to quickly start one, files, and places. Search is completely missing the ability to search through open windows based on their title!

I quickly wrote my first gnome-shell extension to do just that. It is still an early version, and I would like to update it to add more features such as showing a live window preview instead of just the application icon.

Initial Overview Display

Initial Search for "fed" with results being narrowed down. Two open terminals and three open web browsers have titles that match

Search for "fed wiki" showing an open browser on the Fedora Wiki

Try it out, and send me your thoughts:

gnome-shell-extensions-window-search-0.0.1

You can use the gnome-tweak-tool to install it, or extract it into

$HOME/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions