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how do i interface this with a computer

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detoknight

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I am building a touchscreen device that acts as a keyboard n mouse. it will have a custom , intuitive UI. It would not only be used as a keyboard, but also used for launching shortcuts and will have a taskbar in itself. i have explained it in detail here: https://www.edaboard.com/threads/222997/#post949848 .
The thing is, this device will not only send commands to the PC but also read the list of running tasks from the pc.
I only know basic C++. I understand this will require me to code in windows CE / embedded c / embedded linux.
can u please tell me how to proceed.
how can i interface this with the pc. how will i write a driver. or shud a pgm be running on the pc?

Can i do this wirelessly via zigbee or something..bcause i wan this device to control electrical appliance wirelessly as well.how do i do that?
 

how can i interface this with the pc.
Many options like Parallel Port, Serial Port(COM),USB....I would prefer USB as its more common and the rest are getting obsolete.
how will i write a driver
First of all your touch screen will need a hardware to interpret the touch into signal like using ADC,or many touch screen pads use special protocols to send signals. If its an ADC you can directly use the parallel port to detect that but its not the way it should be done, you should use a microcontroller to process the touch screen stuff and communicate to PC using USB through your microcontroller. Now about the driver ,your mcu's manufacturer should provide you with the drivers for the USB stuff ,look on their website you will find it else you have to build the driver which is not easy task like programming for applications. If you are planning for writing your own drivers then you will find tutorials all over the web ,how long it will take to learn it depends on you and in windows you need Windows Device Driver Development Kit, download it from Microsoft.
I think getting the driver from mcu's manufacturer is a better option for beginners.

or shud a pgm be running on the pc?
Yes, normally mouse and keyboard are use interrupt service and their operation happens in kernel level, but you don’t need kernel level operation to achieve that as windows is based on message driven architecture and you just use an application which will trap all the mouse and keyboard messages for windows. If you didn't understood about the above what I said about windows ,then its a long way you have to learn about windows and it takes years to learn it like learning to write device drivers.

Can i do this wirelessly via zigbee or something..bcause i wan this device to control electrical appliance wirelessly as well.how do i do that?
Of course you can, like I said you should use a microcontroller for processing the touch screen stuff, you can use a transceivers with it and communicate with PC .For that your design will be a bit more complex as you will have two units one handling the touch screen pad and transmitting the stuff and another unit will be for receiving the data and sending it to PC using USB. Anyway most of the transceivers use SPI protocol so when selecting mcu be sure that your mcu supports that, even many mcu have built in transceivers.

Good Luck
 
I would definetely do the keyboard interface using a microcontroller, a graphic dedicated chip (like SSD192X), and let it do all your communication with the computer.
You cannot do any interface computer-touchscreen directly. You will have to go through some kind of hardware.
 

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