Touchscreen external monitors on Librem hardware?

Is it safe to assume a touchscreen monitor that claims Linux compatibility will work on Librem?

RE: https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-Front-Light-Touch-Monitor/dp/B07SKS6CS7

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Hard to say, would have to look deeper into it and e.g. if it requires a specific driver to be installed etc.

But I would dare to say, it is highly likely to work, or get to work with reasonable effort.

That being said, this looks like an awesome display!? Really cool! Just also a lot of money, wow…

Cheers
nicole

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On the other hand, it’s sold by “SOL Computer.” https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SOL
:rofl:

At least you should be able to return it easily if it doesn’t work as described.

Is there a plan to introduce touchscreen models of the laptop sometime in the future? Or revisit the tablet?

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We have a lot of plans! :slight_smile:
But I assume you are interested in rather short term plans, i.e. within this year?
Then I am afraid the answer is “unlikely to happen”, I’m sorry.

Cheers
nicole

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I am talking like 2-3 years down the line. I should be getting my Librem 14 shortly. That will keep me occupied for the time being :smiley:

Ha!
Then we are likely in business :slight_smile:

Adding a touch to the laptop is something that comes up quite some time. The only thing keeping at least from it is that this also causes fingerprints on the screen - and usually these touch screens are glare displays, since you see finger prints more easily on non-glare screens. I worked on a glare screen for over a year and then got myself a matte screen filter because the reflections were so distracting. In a dark room, totally fine, but as soon as there are other light sources it really becomes annoying. So we have to see what kind of displays we can get. The good news for the L14 is that there is already I2C on the display connector for an I2C touch panel :slight_smile: So we would not need to modify the main board for that.

Right now LCD sourcing is a real pain which is also one of the reasons for the delays with the L14 :frowning: It took us some additional weeks (!) to get decent panels.

Concerning a tablet, actually, yes, would love to do that, based on the Librem5 main board design. It is a huge effort and with it a lot of investment. So once we have a steady supply of Librem 5 we will for sure look into the feasibility of a tablet. It makes so much sense!

Cheers
nicole

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Librem what? 5? 14? Something else?

The one data point that I can add is that my touchscreen monitor works with the Librem 5 as far as … in the right config, touch events are recognised and cause responses by the UI. Unfortunately it doesn’t fully work for me but I put that down to the state of the surrounding software. The basic USB interaction is right. lsusb shows that a device of the right class turns up. So I think the kernel is good.

That’s a fairly expensive monitor!

That particular monitor may be HDMI only (for video) which means it would require an adapter to work with the Librem 5.

One other thing … that monitor says “USB for power”. That will be a problem on the Librem 5 unless you have a dock and you are on mains power. Maybe less of an issue for eInk though. You would want to get info on power draw.

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I found this thread searching for something similar, a small touchscreen to use the Librem 5 as a tablet. There are many touchscreen monitors for the Raspberry Pi on sale. I bet they function with the Librem 5, but it would be nice to have some feedback from folks that may have had experience with one.

Thanks.

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Right now phoc has some trouble with that https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phoc/-/issues/35

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I tried an external touchscreen monitor with my Librem 5. It was semi-functional. (The Librem 5 recognised the external monitor and displayed the blue hexagons background on it, and the Librem 5 did appear to respond to touch events. But it didn’t fully work in the sense of being usable. Testing this is a work-in-progress for me because there were other things going wrong as well.)

This monitor was not specifically intended for a Pi. (Whether a monitor for a Pi connects at all is a question since Pi monitors may expect a DSI interface or they may expect an HDMI interface. I haven’t seen one with a USB-C video input but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. I believe that current Pi devices don’t support DisplayPort altmode over USB-C or USB-C for data at all.)

A monitor may afford a choice of connectivity.

  1. Video in via HDMI (which on the Librem 5 would then necessitate a dock, or similar).
  2. Video in via USB-C (which would be preferable).

Care would need to be taken as to how the monitor is powered.

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Thank you for the remarks @irvinewade. Could you also disclose with exactly which model did you experiment?

Answered offline.