Thin Client LCD Interface - Stage 1

Recieved the TC-10 I ordered last week - and have started having a play.

Arrived well packaged with wireless keyboard - but absolutely no instructions or drivers.

Took me around 5 minutes to work out how to turn it on too - which wasn't a good start! (the switch is a board mounted micro pushbutton which isn't labelled either!)

Visited their site, and downloaded alll the drivers required. didn't have a large Compact Flash card so purchased one off ebay ($20 for a 1 GB - more than enough to install a basic o/s)

I previously purchased an IDE>Compact flash adaptor - so simply used that and plugged it into my normal pc - booted off a 98 floppy (thanks to: http://www.bootdisk.com) fdisk'ed & formatted the CF card, transferred system, and copied the win98 setup files onto it (I knew my old 98 cd would come in handy one day!) & the lan/video/sound/touch drivers from EarthLCD's site.

Next mission was to get the TC-10 to boot off it.

Plugged in the CF - and booted it up.. No luck - got the old non system disk error.

After I while I worked out that it had an on board 32mb "disk on chip" which I had to disable (was set to the primary) in the BIOS, and also had to enable Dos support, and selected win95 as the operating system (never seen that before in a bios!)

Did the trick - Booted straight away, so installed win 98 (damn it looks dated), the drivers, and all was good!

Next step was to get a terminal services client up and running - first I tried was from my old Windows 2000 server - but the client doesn't do full screen or auto logging on - so after a quick google I found the updated client built for XP http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/tools/rdclientdl.mspx which works well in 98 - and allows settings to be saved as RDP config files!.. So now automatic connections are working

Stage 1 complete:

• I have a working touch controlled thin client (for under $700!)
• Boots straight into a remote desktop session
• Connects directly to my MCE box (as a test).

Stage 2

• Clean up the Thin Client OS (remove components I don't need)
• Create a custom boot/shutdown graphics ( so it doesn't look like Win98)
• Create a nice desktop image (As it takes a couple of seconds between booting up and connecting rdp)
• Hide desktop icons/start bar (again - to lose the Win98 "Feel " :P)

Stage 3

• Build the touchscreen UI (this will one take a while :o) )

Will keep you posted - and maybe get some photos up soon.

EarthLCD: 10" Thin Client LCD

Every smart home needs a nice interface to allow occupants to control various aspects of their abode, so I thought a nice touchscreen interface had to included in the project.

Been looking around on/off for a good few months, but I just wasn't up for paying a few grand for an in-wall pc, and wasn't sure about running long vga/ps2/usb cables to a pc elsewhere in the house.

So I thought building a thin client would be the most affordable solution.

After quite a bit of searching, I found this 10" thin client LCD for a damn good price.

Will be able to install a basic O/S , which will probably Win 98 as it's mentioned on their site - and I haven't touched a *nix system in a very long time.

I'll have it either launch a full screen browser to the interface that I'm yet to write, or perhaps automatically Remote Desktop into my MediaCenter and build a frontend on that.

So Anyway.. I bit the bullet and ordered it - looks like it will be around $700 landed - which is ALOT cheaper than anything else I've been considering. I almost bought a RelayTouch which I thought was perfect - but the price was a bit too steep. Would have come in at around $1700 landed!

If I can get it to work as i'd like to, I may get a few more and have multiple screens setup around the home.