How to configure a Touchscreen under X for Linux.

Installing the OS

Please follow the ["Installing Fedora5"] instructions for Fedora installations.

Additional configuration

This document was written with a unit from Senor Tech. The machine must be setup using a mouse (for graphical mode) because initially the touch screen will not work. The touch screen is internally connected to serial port ttyS0. ttyS1 is hooked up to the internal Customer display. ttyS2 and ttyS3 are cabled out through the back and are available for other serial devices.

Before installing over the default windows XP, I checked the touch screen drivers and they were provided by a company called "ELO Touch systems". Precompiled drivers are available for a lot of Linux distributions/kernels. It would have been simple to just use the provided pre-compiled driver for Fedora Core 6's default kernel, but this kernel lacks support for the internal 10/100/1000 ethernet port. A later version of the kernel (using yum) would now support the ethernet port, but the driver would have to be compiled.

The Unified Serial Driver can be found here or just download the latest from their website on this link:["http://www.elotouch.com/Support/Downloads/dnld.asp#linux"] Copy the driver files to /etc/opt/elo directory 

mv <Extracted Path>/elo /etc/opt/elo

Compile and build the kernel module "elok_s.ko" <using the compile instructions in Readme_compile.txt> (fix this later). Check if kernel module compiles without any errors and then copy it to /etc/opt/elo directory. 

cd /etc/opt/elo/elok_s-source
<COMPILE COMPILE COMPILE> (fix this later)
cp elok_s.ko /etc/opt/elo

Use chmod to grant full permissions to all the files 

cd /etc/opt/elo
chmod 777 *

Copy and place the X display Elo component file in the proper location 

cp /etc/opt/elo/elo_drv.o /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input

Modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

  1. Add the Following lines to the end of the file to create a new Elo device configuration. 
    Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "elo"
    Driver "elo"
    Option "Device" "/dev/input/elo_ser"
    Option "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

  2. Add the following line to the ServerLayout section to include the elo input device. 

         InputDevice "elo" "SendCoreEvents"

Install the elocontrol(elok_S) module by running: 

./install.sh

Edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file and append the following lines to the end: 

/etc/opt/elo/loadelo
/etc/opt/elo/eloser ttyS0

Reboot the system to complete installation: 

shutdown -r now

After rebooting, calibrate the touch screen using the following commands: 

cd /etc/opt/elo
./elova -nvram

use ./elova /? to view other calibration options.

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