OpenCPN on Raspberry Pi w/touchscreen not working

[drewc228]

HI have installed and am using OpenCPN 4.4 on my RPI 3 with the Pi-standard 7" touchscreen HDMI monitor. Touch works well for scroll and pan, most drop down menus, but will not work with the menu bar. None of these menu items seems selectable, even though all other functions operate as expected. Any ideas?

[NoDramas]

Does a bluetooth or USB keyboard work?

[verkerkbr]

Originally Posted by drewc228

HI have installed and am using OpenCPN 4.4 on my RPI 3 with the Pi-standard 7" touchscreen HDMI monitor. Touch works well for scroll and pan, most drop down menus, but will not work with the menu bar. None of these menu items seems selectable, even though all other functions operate as expected. Any ideas?

I have installed other touchscreens with the same problem. It was the orientation of your finger. I had to install the touchscreen calibration software.

With the calibration you get 4 crosses at your screen and you have to touch each cross.

You can do it each time you start the system. Or add the settings to a config.

With scroll and pan the orientation is not important. But with a menu bar you have to touch the right spot.

I have not used a Pi with the standard screen.

[bradfordharley]

I am also experiencing the issue with the RPi and OpenCPN buttons with the 7" touchscreen. It seems to be common in other forums. I have tried one suggested fix to install the 'twofinger' workaround to no avail.
Do we have any feedback from the developer?

I'm running a RPi 3 with a fresh install of Raspian (with Pixel). I'm only using this for opencpn, so I'll run any version of that works....

Brad.

[bdbcat]

Brad....

1. Please send me a link to information on the touch screen you are using.

2. And just to be sure we are talking about the same thing: Do you mean the "menu bar" or the "tool bar" is unresponsive? Which one? Both?

Thanks
Dave

[bradfordharley]

Dave,

Thanks for the response and great questions.

1. I am using what's often dubbed the 'offical' 7" screen. here is a link to the manufacturer:
https://www.element14.com/community/...screen-display.
2. Sorry for the confusion on the bar. I am using the tool bar. And to be specific, trying to hit the configuration buttons (wrench) etc. minimizing, closing etc. all work as normal, and the touchscreen works for normal rpi menu navigation.

As an aside, there is a fair amount on other forums for this issue. The link below acutally has a video demonstration:
No touch on official 7" Touchdisplay

There are also several threads on this forum which overlap with this topic. Just search on touchscreen and they all seem to circulate around the same issue.

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

Brad

[Moo]

Originally Posted by bradfordharley

I am also experiencing the issue with the RPi and OpenCPN buttons with the 7" touchscreen. It seems to be common in other forums. I have tried one suggested fix to install the 'twofinger' workaround to no avail.
Do we have any feedback from the developer?

I see the same thing with OCPN version 4.4 and now 4.6

RPi V3 updated and upgraded with apt-get.

Touch interface on or off doesn't make any difference.

Tapping on the icons in the toolbar does cause some of them to highlight green but that is the only effect that I can see.

All other apps seem fine. I read somewhere else that it is an X windows bug

Moo

[bdbcat]

Folks...

I obtained a rPI 7" official display, and verified the error.

The error is cause, I believe, by a fault in the touchscreen driver interface to wxWidgets. And that ultimately comes from the X input driver stack. But in any case, a workaround was devised, and test code is working fine now.

This fix will appear in OpenCPN Release 4.6.1, due out in a few days.

Thanks for your patience.
Dave

[Wetterbote]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Folks...

This fix will appear in OpenCPN Release 4.6.1, due out in a few days.

Thanks for your patience.
Dave

I know this is an old thread, but I'm now seeing the exact same behavior with OpenCPN 5.6.2-0 on Raspberry Pi 4 running in 64 bit mode. Looks a bit like when selecting a menu option, the virtual mouse button is pressed but not released (because it acts as if the button was being pressed if moving the cursor around with a real mouse).



Is it possible that some update has broken this again?

[mgrouch]

Originally Posted by Wetterbote

I know this is an old thread, but I'm now seeing the exact same behavior with OpenCPN 5.6.2-0 on Raspberry Pi 4 running in 64 bit mode. Looks a bit like when selecting a menu option, the virtual mouse button is pressed but not released (because it acts as if the button was being pressed if moving the cursor around with a real mouse).



Is it possible that some update has broken this again?

Have you tried BBN OS for raspberry pi4? It has latest OpenCPN and has touchscreen issues (including two finger zoom) sorted out.

https://bareboat-necessities.github....reboat-os.html

[Wetterbote]

Originally Posted by mgrouch

Have you tried BBN OS for raspberry pi4? It has latest OpenCPN and has touchscreen issues (including two finger zoom) sorted out.

https://bareboat-necessities.github....reboat-os.html

I'm having a highly customized system, so it would require quite a bit of extra effort to start from a new image. Do you know what tool/driver they use for this? Adding that manually would likely be easier for me.

[mgrouch]

Originally Posted by Wetterbote

I'm having a highly customized system, so it would require quite a bit of extra effort to start from a new image. Do you know what tool/driver they use for this? Adding that manually would likely be easier for me.

You can just use a new SD card to boot from and see. Your highly customized system will stay on another SD.
What do you have highly customized?
You might find that you need less customizations to apply to BBN OS to achieve what you already have.

[Wetterbote]

Originally Posted by mgrouch

You can just use a new SD card to boot from and see. Your highly customized system will stay on another SD.
What do you have highly customized?
You might find that you need less customizations to apply to BBN OS to achieve what you already have.

I might try this when I have a bit of time. The strange thing is that everything was working fine as far as I can tell before I upgraded the OS to 64 bit, so it appears there bug described above slipped in again in some library or the fix is now wrong.



I have basically written my own toolkit for the entire data flow: NMEA forwarding between different devices, access to different hardware sensors (IMU, temperature, engine data) etc. Standard components (such as kplex) would interfere with that.

[Eight Sails]

I have the same issue withh OpenCPN 5.6.2 and Pi 4 with a 13.5" touchscreen monitor I recently bought (I'd rather not run headless on the boat; if something goes wrong and VNC can't connect when I boot, and I'm offshore not at the dock, I'm scr**ed). This isn't an issue with the standard 7" Pi screen, for sure.

I don't believe this is an issue with X or with touch calibration, either. Every OpenCPN UI object *except* the toolbar works fine. No other app in the OpenPlotter image I use exhibits this issue. I'm posting this from my boat using the Chromium browser on the Pi 4. I edit a lot and placing the insertion bar with the tip of my finger is a snap. Nope -- I think not an X bug, or calibration issue unless specifically related to the way the OpenCPN developers coded the toolbar. To cite but one other example: the chart options panel works perfectly. Like others, I've found that touch highlights toolbar items (.e.g. Enable Tracking, Dashboard) and it displays tool tips but it won't open the tools.

Clicking with an actual mouse works OK. But I don't want a mouse sliding all over the chart table when the boat is heeled over and punching into a heavy sea.

IMO this is a fundamental usabilty issue with potentially serious safety implications at sea.

[bdbcat]

"IMO this is a fundamental usabilty issue with potentially serious safety implications at sea."


And I am certainly glad you found the issue with your hardware setup in a safe environment, and not at sea. Good job.


If you will post a Flyspray Task describing the problem, we may be able to address it in a future version of OpenCPN.


Thanks for the report
Dave