I have a new project where I will incorporate a touchscreen monitor. Do I need a Windows 8 operating system in order for the components in Ignition to function using touchscreen mode?
It doesnât matter. You can have Win7, Win8, Win8.1 or Win10 (on the client side).
But I would advise against it⌠look at my topic (and nobody had any comments on it 
)
https://inductiveautomation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=14886
Even that Ignition is in 7.8, touch screen support is less than average at best.
Iâve started developing my current project with touch in mind way before I get my touch screen monitor on my desk. Now that I have it, I would newer use touch.
Iâm going to throw in my two cents on this. I have deployed several touchscreen projects with Ignition with good results (all on Ubuntu Linux clients). However, I would be quick to add that you need to think about the application and the user. Some applications are suitable for touchscreen and some are not. One project I did has a touchscreen client for one function right next to a mouse/keyboard client for another function.
Touchscreens are good for âpushbuttonâ type controls where buttons can be made large enough for fingers and/or gloved hands as appropriate. Sometimes a touchscreen is much preferred over maintaining a mouse and/or keyboard or in dirty factory environments. However, small screen controls and lots of keyed entries can be frustrating with a touchscreen, especially if entries are frequent or need to be rapidly executed.
To the original question, however, the only requirement is that you have a driver for the touchscreen controls for whatever operating system you are using. The controls emulate a mouse. I would also recommend adding a program like âUnclutterâ to remove the cursor from staying on the screen.
1 Like
The screens that I will develop will only have large momentary buttons and dropdown lists so that shouldnât be a problem. Thanks for the recommendations.
I want to add my findings to this discussion as well. Weâre using:
Ignition 7.9.5
JRE 1.8.0_161
Windows 10
on a Tangent Vita KW Enclosed PC
âLong press for right clickâ is disabled
PLC: 5380 Compact Logix with a scan time of ~1ms
We have momentary buttons that jog servo motors and they are not producing the desired momentary behavior.
The settings for our momentary buttons are:
Control Value: mapped to PLC tag w/ scan class 100ms leased
Min Hold Time: 5ms
Max Hold Time: 1,000,000
When the buttons are pressed and held, the control value is not written until the finger is dragged, moving around the button while pressed.
Actually, for the entire Ignition program, actions seem only be performed when the finger is pressed and released, simulating a mouse click.
We have also tried a regular button with mouse event scripts for mouse pressed and mouse released as suggested on other threads, but the resulting behavior is exactly the same.
As other people have mentioned, the behavior works as expected with a mouse on both types of buttons (both in the designerâs preview mode, and a mouse plugged into our touch screen monitor).
What I intend to try next is Windows 10âs tablet mode, but Iâm not holding my breath.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue?
1 Like
As I feared, tablet mode has no effect on button press behavior. I found an interesting article here https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Press-and-hold-on-a-Surface-pro-touch-screen/td-p/2816346
where a contributor talks about the standard behavior for windowsâŚ
âThe standard Windows behavior for a button is Latch when Released which is what you are describing. With the touch screen I canât actually depress the button when using âswitch until releasedââŚâ
The windows 10 pen and touch driver has a double tap action that results in an âequivalent mouse actionâ of a double click. I believe that is what we are seeing when I drag my finger around the pressed momentary buttons in ignition.
Could it be that Ignition, operating on a touch screen in an automation environment (which will always have need for momentary buttons pressed by fingers), is really not compatible with Windows OS?
I use TCS-030-02032-001 brand touch screens for several different applications. I eventually found that my JOG buttons were not working due to the Right Click problem with touch screens. The Right Click pop up was appearing behind the application. This touch screen has âPM-pen mountâ touch software. In settings for this, i can turn off âuse press & hold as right clickâ. This solved my problem.
Thanks for the recommendation Steve. Iâd be interested to try it out, and specifically the âPM-pen mountâ touch software. Unfortunately with our windows âpen and touchâ driver, the right click feature is not the solution to our issue.
To distill our problem down to the simplest of terms:
I put a simple button on a main window, and added a label next to it that says âHello Worldâ. After turning the labelâs visibility off, I added a mouse pressed script to the button which turns the labelâs visibility on if the button is pressed.
On the touch screen client, when the button is pressed with my finger, the label does not show (unless I release my finger). So the âmouse pressedâ action is simply not honored with my current setup.
It seems other touch screens and drivers work with ignition, but our choice of monitor + windows Pen and Touch driver have handicapped us significantly.
Differences in processing of mouse presses and releases across different operating systems is a real problem, and getting worse as touch screens take over the market. Youâll note in the documentation for createPopupMenu that right-click processing for menus varies across OSâs, too.
You should also keep in mind that press-and-hold-to-jog is a potentially dangerous operation to command over any TCP channel, due to the many-seconds recovery time of TCP to lost packets in even modestly congested network conditions. With an Ignition client, thereâs likely two TCP channels that can screw you: the HTTP connection from client to gateway, and the OPC connection from gateway to PLC.
If you can rework your UI to not need jog, you should do so.
2 Likes
If your thinking about just purchasing a cheap touch screen, you may not end up with the desired results.
However, if you purchase an âEmbedded Touch Panelâ that is designed to function within the industrial environment, I think everything will work as you expect.
Hereâs an example of what I mean, as you can see by the price weâre not talking about a consumer device.
https://www.maplesystems.com/products/panel-pc/pc419C/features/
This issue was resolved! It ended up being a driver issue. We were using an eGalaxTouch driver, and after installing the utility, there was a setting that we could change for âclick on pressâ instead of âclick on releaseâ. Thank you for all your inputs.
We resolved this issue as well by installing eGalaxTouch driver.
tried first the newest version of the driver but this didnât recognise the touch controller.
rolled back to version 5.14.0.1680_A00 and this worked. we found this driver on Dellâs support pages for driver downloads.
in the controlpanel for eGalax touch we disabled the hold to right click option and set the mouse mode to âDesktopâ. This gave the desired behaviour in Ignition Vision Client to press and hold = tag TRUE and release = tag FALSE, like a doorbell button.