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mjones2620mjones2620 Posts: 86
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Hello All,

Is it possible to program a page of a touch panel to just display a webpage, and if so can this page be interactive?

Comments

  • GregGGregG Posts: 251
    For the regular AMX G4 type panels, the answer would be "not exactly".

    You could try to spend a very long time writing HTML parsing code which could then try to display images and text on buttons that it tried to move into relative position. I thought about it... once. An RSS reader was about as far as that got.

    Some easier and less expensive options are:
    1) Spec a cheap little computer into the job (or absorb it into the programming fee) and use a G4 computer control window.
    2) Use TPControl on an Android tablet, since they can open the web application on the tablet for you. (Maybe supported on Win8 and iPad now, but I'm not certain)

    And another option is to wait and get your hands on a new G5 X series panel which support a builtin web browser.
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    Well, kind of, but the one time I did it, I was not real happy with the results.

    You need to make a computer control window pointing at a PC, which also requires that PC to be always on and have a static IP on the network. Then you need to install the i!-PCLinkWeb app on the computer so it can appear as a device on your AMX master, and put some code in there that will make it open your browser and go to the correct URL. Alternately, you can just leave a window open on the PC to that page, but that causes issues if anyone closes it by mistake. As I said, I only did it once, and I already had a PC in the rack running other things, so I just used it for this purpose too.

    The downsides were the computer control window didn't scale the PC screen well, and I had to fuss a lot to make it useable at all. Touch panel acting like a mouse worked, but the resolution was very, very, rough, and hard to "click" small links or buttons.

    I wouldn't do it again, to be honest. It only barely did what I needed it to do, but it did it badly and did not leave me with a warm, fuzzy, "this was professional" feeling. I got rid of it first chance I could.
  • mjones2620mjones2620 Posts: 86
    DHawthorne wrote: »
    Well, kind of, but the one time I did it, I was not real happy with the results.

    You need to make a computer control window pointing at a PC, which also requires that PC to be always on and have a static IP on the network. Then you need to install the i!-PCLinkWeb app on the computer so it can appear as a device on your AMX master, and put some code in there that will make it open your browser and go to the correct URL. Alternately, you can just leave a window open on the PC to that page, but that causes issues if anyone closes it by mistake. As I said, I only did it once, and I already had a PC in the rack running other things, so I just used it for this purpose too.

    The downsides were the computer control window didn't scale the PC screen well, and I had to fuss a lot to make it useable at all. Touch panel acting like a mouse worked, but the resolution was very, very, rough, and hard to "click" small links or buttons.

    I wouldn't do it again, to be honest. It only barely did what I needed it to do, but it did it badly and did not leave me with a warm, fuzzy, "this was professional" feeling. I got rid of it first chance I could.

    Thanks for the insight.

    The reason I am asking this, is because with the release of RMS 4, and lack of a scheduling function.. I am trying to come up with creative ways to make this work for our company. We currently are running a third party scheduling software that works with an SQL database, using a web UI. We've invested a lot of money into this product, and don't want to have to go with an Outlook plugin, or something of that nature to retrain users. Unless someone can help me figure out how to link the two together with two way communication, I'm stuck trying to figure out if I should be using tablets, or pcs, or what to take care of the scheduling issue.
  • GregGGregG Posts: 251
    It would be a large undertaking, depending on the complexity of your scheduling database solution. But you could interface to that from AMX and display the results on a normal touch panel page using something like: http://www.amx.com/products/i!-DatabasePlus.asp
  • PhreaKPhreaK Posts: 966
    mjones2620 wrote: »
    The reason I am asking this, is because with the release of RMS 4, and lack of a scheduling function.

    ...RMS Enterprise (aka v4) has scheduling. What exactly are you after?

    If RMS isn't for you rather than talking directly to the database of your other scheduling solution it may be a little neater to roll a bit of middleware that sits between your control systems and this and abstracts the functionality you need into an interface format of your choosing. This was you maintain a bit of abstraction.
  • mjones2620mjones2620 Posts: 86
    PhreaK wrote: »
    ...RMS Enterprise (aka v4) has scheduling. What exactly are you after?

    If RMS isn't for you rather than talking directly to the database of your other scheduling solution it may be a little neater to roll a bit of middleware that sits between your control systems and this and abstracts the functionality you need into an interface format of your choosing. This was you maintain a bit of abstraction.

    Kim,

    I want the ability for touch panels outside of conference rooms to display our conference room calendar, and be able to communicate two ways to our calendar that is hosted on a SQL server. I've been told numerous times by AMX engineers that this is "on the roadmap" but not possible right now.

    Care to explain how this can be accomplished?

    Thanks,
    Matt
  • champchamp Posts: 261
    RMSE was jokingly called RMS 2020 because that's when it looked like it would finally be released, they must have been referring to the release date of the API :)
    I'm afraid the solution to you're scheduling integration is going to be a very difficult one.
    Until there is a published API it would involve database trolling, even when there is an API for RMSE you'll still need to know how to hook into your current scheduling solution which may involve database trolling.
  • PhreaKPhreaK Posts: 966
    Yep. Champ nailed it there. Regardless of if you use RMS the majority of development effort here is going to be getting the scheduling information in to / out of your custom scheduling solution. As mentioned a nice approach for this would be to build yourself a little bit of middleware that provides an API that can be consumed by your control systems. With what you can do today you can then have all of your NI's as clients of this. Should the RMS API become available you can then switch to just having a single client - RMS - which then then tie in with all of the rest of the scheduling functionality it provides as well as the pre built UI's for calendaring etc.
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