LinuxCNC GUIs on small 640x480 touch screen

Hi,

I plan to experiment with LinuxCNC using Servo Control via Parallel Port IO on an older Dual-Core System that was decommissioned and thus very cheap.
I also recently got hold of an 640x480 TFT from around 2000 (Y2K) with touch screen, that I was able to build a somewhat working controller for (AVR V-USB) since I was not able to find any documentation for the original controller.
So now I have a small touch screen that I was hoping to use for LinuxCNC but on starting, I found out that such resolutions seem to out of favor with Ubuntu and LinuxCNC since the screen layout / GUI is not adapting to it, i.e. fixed-size widgets and no scrolling.
The only way to access the GUI currently is using ALT+mouse-drag to move the window around the view.
Another thing I noticed was the apparently non-standard menu behaviour in LinuxCNC/AXIS 2.5.3 where the "Machine" and "View" menus just open as long as the mouse is pressed, which really does not go well with a touch panel input device.

As a complete beginner with LinuxCNC I was wondering if there is any chance these kinds of issues will be picked up by the developers despite the rarity of 640x480 screens..

Thanks!

Hi

You are confusing Linuxcnc with the GUI which runs by default with it, which is Axis.

The GUI can be selected in the .ini file
www.linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/config/...ub_display_section_a

There are 2 new GUIs under development and an older one in the main project, all supporting touch screens far better

Look on the forum for
www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum...-screen-for-linuxcnc

www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum...-python-based-screen

Also look at Touchy in the Linuxcnc distribution (don't think there is a lot of documentation for that, you just need to try it)

regards

For 640 x 480 and a touch screen, you should check out the Touchy GUI. It resizes to fit
the screen, and can be operated easily via the touch panel. You lose a few things, like
the 3D preview, but it is ideal for that small screen.

You do need two buttons that can be pressed by the operator plus an encoder
(jog dial) to use Touchy.

Jon

you can have a preview in touchy using a gladevcp tab for gremlin_view with git master.

there are sim configs to illustrate the EMBED ini file lines:
sim/touchy/ngcgui/pyngcgui_touchy
sim/touchy/ngcgui/pyngcgui_touchy_lathe

these configs include simulated buttons for touchy.cycle-start and touchy.abort

but I doubt that it will work right with a screen as small as 640x480

Thanks for all the information, I'm happy to hear that there is a way to use the old hardware.