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How to identify a serial device

Dave Bhattacharjee — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 17:57:13 GMT

We are often contacted to try and help identify a serial touch device so that the correct driver can be selected for the device.

If the touch screen is attached to a monitor then it may be possible to identify the touch device from the manufacturer and model number of the monitor by referring to our touch monitor database here (select Touch Monitor in the Device Type dropdown).

If the monitor is not listed other clues as to its identification could be any labels on the touch screen controller board (if accessible) or any old drivers that may have been supplied originally with the touch device.

Failing the obvious ways to identify the device the only other way to identify it is to capture some raw touch data and email to Touch-Base such that we can cross reference the captured data with our controller configuration database to see if we can find a matching sequence.

Prior to attempting to capture some data it is important to ensure you can identify the serial device in the system and prove that data is being seen at the port. This document describes how this can be achieved.

We offer two methods of capturing serial data:

Our data scope utility as documented here.

A test driver installed for the purposes of capturing touch data.

Test Driver
This Windows test driver 32 or 64 bits installs the UPDD software to allow the capture of touch data in a defined pattern such that we can use the captured data to cross reference with existing controller configurations or add a definition to support the controller. Installation instructions are here. By default the serial device is configured for communication interface; 9600 baud rate, no parity, 8 data bits and 1 stop bits (9600,N,8,1). Most serial devices operate at this configuration but this can be changed in the driver control program (UPDD Console, Hardware, Connected to option) to adjust as required to match the actual configuration of the serial device.

Test drivers are also available for Linux and Mac OS X if required.

Once installed follow the data capture instructions here. At the bottom of the document it gives an example of the captured log file and what constitutes sensible touch data and what to do if no data or 'rubbish' data is captured.

Multiple single serial number controllers under Windows XP

Dave Bhattacharjee — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:33:02 GMT

Windows XP does not like USB devices with the same Vendor and Product id to have identical serial numbers. The USB spec states that manufactures should either not specify a serial number or they should be unique numbers. Some manufacturers offer firmware setting utilities whereby a system integrator can set the serial number in the controller.

If a 2nd USB device is plugged in that has the same vendor id, product id and serial number some suggest XP will reboot. In our observations, you can occasionally get XP to correctly list the devices in the Device Manager but more often than not it will list one with an error:

The device listed above is a Quanta Dual touch HID device. Using USBlyzer to view the properties it shows a rather strange serial number, which seem to be defined in all of these controllers:

However, we there is a registry setting that caters for rogue manufacturers who assign a single serial number to all instances of a particular product. To work around this you can create a binary key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\UsbFlags that has the form IgnoreHWSerNumVVVVPPPP. Here VVVV is the 4 hex digits of the vendor id and PPPP is the 4 digits of the product id. Creating this and setting the value to 01 means that windows will ignore the serial number and act as if the device never had one at all. Doing this causes windows to then use the connection number to discriminate between different devices which works fine.

With the above rogue device you need the setting:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\usbflags]

"IgnoreHWSerNum04083008"=hex:01

We are also aware there is a setting to ignore all serial number processing on XP - GlobalDisableSerNumGen if preferred to defining individual entries.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\usbflags]

"GlobalDisableSerNumGen"=hex:01

UPDD Monitor Metrics

Dave Bhattacharjee — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:55:37 GMT

It is important that the driver keeps a view of the system monitor layout so that it can direct the point of touch to the correct position within the system's monitor metrics. Given the driver process executes in a context where it might not have access to information about system monitor layouts this information is also held in the UPDD settings file tbupdd.ini in the setting monitorsetupmetrics

Example

monitorsetupmetrics=0:0:1079:1919:5760:0:1079:7679:0:0:1079:1919:3840:0:1079:5759:1920:0:1079:3839:0:0:1079:1919: repeated

Each group of 4 colon separated numbers gives the left , top, right, bottom co-ordinate of a monitor.

The first group is the primary monitor.

The second is the monitor 1 as seen by UPDD.

The third is monitor 2 as seen by UPDD.

And so forth.

In the example above it can be seen that Monitor 2 is set as the primary monitor.

For the positions that do not have an associated monitor (marked in green in the 4 monitor example above) the primary monitor values are recorded.

These value are set

1) On Windows during execution of the setup program.

2) During execution of the calibration program (All OS)

3) At system startup by aidaemom (All OS)

4) Optionally when a display setting changes by aidaemon. For this the dynamicmonitormetricssetting must be set which is by default on. If on (1) aidaemon recreates monitorsetupmetrics whenever a display change message is issued. Currently Windows only. This also caters for the relocation of the primary monitor.

This is a recent change in 5.1.1122 driver and hopefully will not cause any issues, especially when rotating in an extended desktop environment. In our tests all appears to work as expected.

UPDD USB device not listed in Device Manager under Windows XP

Dave Bhattacharjee — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:19:40 GMT

If a USB supported device is not discovered by UPDD and added into the Mice and Pointer Device branch there is a possibility that the device id type listed for the device is not recognized by UPDD (we look for a number of device types).

Should this be the case we need to know the device id type notified by Windows for the device. This can be achieved as follows:

1) Look in the Device Manager, Mice and pointer devices branch, and confirm the USB device is not listed (no USB device ending with ...., USB (UPDD))

If missing then please.....

2) Load a kernel debugged - download debugview at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx and set the following settings:

3) Run these commands in a CMD window from c:\program files\updd

tbutils nodevice setting dw pnptrace 1 (this enables PnP tracing)

tbupddwu -odc (this reloads the driver and prints the hardware information used to determine whether to take control of a device)

Cut and paste the output from the debugger window and send it to us.

Mac downloads damaged and can't be opened

Dave Bhattacharjee — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 07:43:12 GMT

FIXED 18 August 2014 - Correctly embedded developer credentials within TUIO software.

We get the occasional report that our mac software is reported as 'damaged and can't be opened', such as:

"UPDD-TUIO" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

A customer reported that changing their security and privacy settings to allow apps downloaded from Anywhere, instead of identified developers, stopped the error from appearing.

Windows installation procedure

Dave Bhattacharjee — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 17:24:34 GMT

Occasionally we have reported issues with our Windows installer and following a recent problem with a customer installing on Windows Embedded 2009 we have created this article to document the install sequence of events to help identify any future install issues.

If the install fails before the GUI is seen then there are likely to be two error messages that pop up:

and / or

These are misleading as they suggest a problem in the API. In fact what has happened is that an error in the installer bootstrap process has occurred.

This error is not reported correctly an as a result the installer continues assuming the required files are in place and gives the messages above when the first API call fails.

The problem appears to have 2 underlying causes. The program used to manage CAB files appears not to work correctly on some systems. We have not identified the root cause of this but we no longer ship this module and instead use the version shipped with the operating system. (Previously we shipped this module as the O/S versions varied and required differing arguments, limited tests on current versions of Windows show that this appears to longer be an issue).

An issue with the Windows CreateProcess API leads to issues with quoted arguments. We have changed the arguments passed to work correctly with current versions of expand.exe.

The following is a description of the updd installer for Windows bootstrap process with UPDD 5.1.nnnn.

The user runs the installer, setupNN_05.01.NNNN.exe

This program holds all the required files for the installation. These files are embedded in a series of CAB files, which in turn are embedded as Windows binary resources.

The bootstrap process extracts the files required to launch the graphical installer as follows.

The folder %temp%tbtemp is created.

The file setup.cab is extracted as %temp%tbtemp\setup.cab

This file is in turn expanded with its files copied to %temp%tbtemp

Using a command like

expand -r "C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\setup.cab" -F:* "C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp"

Of course the actual location of the temp folder varies according to the system being installed to.

The current working directory is set to %temp%tbtemp when this command is executed.

The actual set of files installed can varies according to the updd package (bundle) and is subject to change but at the time of writing this is a typical set up files used for the bootstrap process.

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\ACE_updd_5.6.2.dll -- 3rd party cross platform support used by api for IPC and synchronisation

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu.exe -- provides the GUI for the installer

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_ar.qm -- one qm for for each supported language to allow the GUI to be localised

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_ch.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_cs.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_ct.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_da.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_de.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_el.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_es.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_fi.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_fr.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_he.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_hi.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_hu.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_it.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_ja.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_jp.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_ko.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_lv.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_nb.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_nl.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_pl.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_pt.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_ru.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_sv.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_tr.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\dcu_zh.qm

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\ilogo.png -- image for branding on the GUI

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\licence-de.txt -- licence files in various languages

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\licence-en.txt

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\licence-fr.txt

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\licence-ja.txt

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\licence-ru.txt

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\logo.PNG -- image for branding on the GUI

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\mousel.png -- image used by installer, probably redundant will be considered for removal in a later version

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\mouser.png -- image used by installer, probably redundant will be considered for removal in a later version

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\msvcrt.dll -- C run time library

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\qjpcodecs4.dll -- codec file used by Qt for Japanese support (note that the file is extracted to this location but then copied to the location noted below)

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\Qt3Support4.dll -- Qt 4 libraries used by the GUI

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\QtCore4.dll

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\QtGui4.dll

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\QtNetwork4.dll

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\QtSql4.dll

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\QtXml4.dll

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\reenum.exe -- helper tool to force redetection of PnP devices.

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\setup.cab -- the original container for all these files

C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\TBUPDD.INI -- settings for this UPDD package

c:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local\Temp\tbtemp\codecs\qjpcodecs4.dll -- codec file used by Qt for Japanese support, Qt requires this oto be in a subdirectory “codecs”

With the files in place the GUI can now run. Unless a silent install is in progress the GUI is launched with the command

dcu /install

The setup program waits for completion of the GUI and then extracts the remaining files and performs the remaining actions to configure the software.

The actual set of files extracted is not fixed. The installer looks for numbered resources > 8000 but excluding that with the name of setup_cab.

For each found the file is extracted to a sub folder based on the name, eg

Resource MAINDIR_CAB is extracted to %temp%tbtemp\maindir\maindir.cab and its contents in turn extracted to %temp%tbtemp\maindir.

The installer later copies the files from the extracted folders to appropriate locations and at the end the folder %temp%tbtemp is removed along with all its contents.

A typical set of cab files is as follows:

…\temp\tbtemp\setup.cab -- the bootstrap files described above

…\temp\tbtemp\DRV32_1.cab -- driver files to install to %windir%\system32\drivers

…\temp\tbtemp\MAINDIR1.cab -- application files to install to %programfiles%\updd

…\temp\tbtemp\SYSDIR1.cab -- system files to install to %windir%

…\temp\tbtemp\WINDIR1.cab -- system files to install to %windir%\system32 (currently not used)

…\temp\tbtemp\MAINDIR\HELP1.cab -- html files for the help system

…\temp\tbtemp\MAINDIR\HELPI1.cab -- image files for the help system

Note that multi part cab files use the names file<N>.cab so for example MAINDIR1.cab above is the first part of a potential multi part CAB file MAINDIR.cab

In the current version the size of a cab file part is limited to 1GB so unlikely to be reached; but the multipart naming is retained from previous versions were a lower thresholds was needed.

Windows 7 / 8 extended touch support

Dave Bhattacharjee — Tue, 20 May 2014 10:00:06 GMT

In all Windows operating systems the driver can post simple single touch data via the 'mouse port interface' to perform simple touch functionality.

In Windows systems that offer extended touch functionality the driver can also post data into the extended touch system via a 'Virtual HID interface' such that the extended touch features are enabled for all UPDD supported devices.

In the UPDD Console there is a check box control that indicates the interface to use to post touch data.

The extended touch option will be available in Windows editions that support extended touch features and that include pen services in the build.

The UPDD Click mode options and the UPDD Event Selector are currently only available with the mouse interface and are disabled if the extended touch feature is enabled as the processing of the touch data in this mode is dictated by the specific HID touch 'device' interface. In the case of the UPDD Virtual HID we mimic a 16 stylus pen/tablet type device as indicated by the system info.

In Windows editions where the OS does not support Extended Touch, such as XP, the check box will be missing or grayed out. This will also be the case for editions that are capable of supporting extended touch but are missing the tablet components. For example, Win 7 embedded is available in 3 versions but only WS7P contains the table component. WS7E and WS7C do not appear to contain the tablet component.

To determine if pen services are available our installer looks for the registry entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\TabletInputService\DisplayName

and if this exists sets UPDD setting 'penservicesavailable' = 1.

The UPDD Console shows the Extended Touch option if this UPDD setting exists and is set to 1 otherwise it defaults to the mouse mode interface.

Should the 'Extended Touch' option be missing or not selectable on systems deemed capable of extended touch features this can always be enabled by setting 'penservicesavailable' manually using the following command:

tbutils nodevice setting dw penservicesavailable 1

Should this manual intervention work please advise us the Windows edition in use so we can amend our records and investigate further.

UPDD Windows security level implications

Dave Bhattacharjee — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:09:03 GMT

UPDD driver version 5

Under Windows Vista and above UPDD installs a virtual HID device driver upddvh.sys to provide the pen / tablet services used by the UPDD “extended touch” mode.

This driver explicitly sets high security level access as recommended by Microsoft best practice for mouse class drivers.

We are aware that once this is done Windows changes the default security level access for the all mouse class drivers and this may have a profound effect on legacy touch screen drivers that may be installed to support other touchscreens.

Following the install of UPDD any user mode applications associated with mouse class device drivers, such as calibrate or system tray utilities, might fail when requesting a handle to their device drivers due to the increased level of the security for the mouse class drivers.

When uninstalling UPDD Windows does not revert back to the original security access level.

Possible solutions:

1) Change user mode programs to request a handle in such a manner that will work with secure access rights.

2) Change the driver to define an appropriate/lesser level of security to allow the user mode apps access.

3) Instruct UPDD not to install the Virtual HID driver, restricting touch interface to the mouse port interface only.

4) Utilise a UPDD Virtual HID that sets a lesser security access level

5) Install a UPDD driver to support all touch screens utilised on the system.

i2C interface considerations

Dave Bhattacharjee — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 10:57:27 GMT

There are various touch screen hardware interfaces, the most common being USB and Serial. However, we are increasing asked if we support the i2c interface and this can't be answered with a simple yes or no as there are a number of factors involved when dealing with this interface. Ultimately we can get a i2c interface working but the effort involved will very much be dependent on the interface method needed to access the i2c chip.

We have successfully completed a Windows CE project using the i2c interface and the Atmel mxt224e chip. This KB article is mainly based on the experience we had with this project which we believe will apply generally to i2c chips under other operating systems as the principle is the same.

This article applies to the use of an i2c chip utilised on the bus and not with any form a bridging chip that will introduce another interface.

The specifications of a i2c chip will indicate the registry usage for setup,configuration and data extraction. The driver needs to be able to manipulate these registers to be able to configure the chip and receive touch data.

The development involved in this interface is determined by the level and manner in which the driver can access the chip. At the lowest level the driver has to communicate directly with the chip to manipulate the registers and this requires some form of bus driver that allows register reading and writing.

This interface may well need to be performed at a kernel mode level.

In some cases, or in some OS, the chip manufacturer may supply some form of user mode interface such that the registers can be accessed from user mode i.e. an application. In the CE project we were supplied a 'proxy DLL' for this purpose but due to some limitations we accessed the chip directly.

There could be situations where a software layer has been written that does the low level i2c interfacing and offers a API to an application / user mode driver to receive touch data without the need to interface with the chip. In this case you would be dealing with an application API interface and not a i2c interface albeit we are not currently aware of any such API level interfaces.

LabVIEW UPDD interface

Dave Bhattacharjee — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 16:28:20 GMT

Certified LabVIEW Architect and software consultant Steffan Bedamou has written a LabVIEW UPDD toolkit.

The toolkit provides a LabVIEW interface to our UPDD Windows driver.

For more details see http://www.aledyne.com/updd.html or email Steffan at steffan@aledyne.com

Support considerations

Dave Bhattacharjee — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:07:23 GMT

Our driver is used on 1000's of systems covering many different environments and operating systems. The driver may have been supplied directly from Touch-Base or supplied from other suppliers or OEM's. Inevitably, as with all software, there will be support issues and when we are contacted for support or advice we find ourselves asking the same questions time and again so this document has been written to try and cover the basics so that we can try and resolve issues as efficiently as possible.

Given our touch drivers have been available for many years it is possible that the driver with which you are experiencing problems may be out-of-date or even so old it is no longer supported. It makes sense that where possible you should be using the latest software as this is likely to have addressed the majority of previous known issues. At the time of writing the driver versions are as follows:

Driver version and support

Version	Description
3.x.x	Supporting Win 95 and earlier is no longer supported.
4.0.1	Mac Power PC release - no longer supported.
4.0.6	Mainly used for CE 3,4,5 - no longer supported.
4.1.6	Win 2000 thro' Vista. Should not be used on Win 7 due to bug with program manager list when uninstalled.
4.1.10	XP thro' Win 7. Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7. Win CE 5,6,7. Linux.
5.0.2	XP thro' Win 8. Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, Linux.
5.1.0	XP thro' Win 8. Win CE 5,6,7,2013.

Documentation

We try our best to keep all documentation up-to-date so please ensure you have referenced the latest documentation, especially that which relates to the correct installation procedures for the operating system in use.

Installation

Make sure any older UPDD or 3rd party drivers installed for the device are uninstalled before installing the latest UPDD driver. Ensure the installation completed successfully. In all cases it is expected that the driver will start working after install but there are some legitimate reasons why a reboot or restart of the system may be required so please ensure a restart is performed if touch is not working after installation

Driver Components

The driver consists of the following main components:

Component	OS	Description
tbupddwu	All	User mode driver module
aidaemon	All	Background task - cross platform functions
tbupdd.ini	All	Settings file
dcu	All	UPDD Console
tbupddsu	Windows	Kernel mode driver module
upddvh	Windows	Virtual HID interface
tbdaemon	Windows	Background task - Windows functions
tblinuxmouse	Linux	User mode Xorg interface (if used!)
tbupddmxhid.kext	Mac OS X	Kernel extension

Hardware recognition

Ensure the device is recognised and listed by the operating system as detected and working, such as in the Windows Device manager. In this example, UPDD has been installed and has been associated with 2 USB devices:

Driver Recognition

Having established as best as possible that the device is seen by the OS without any errors you can now invoke the UPDD Settings program to confirm that the driver has also successfully recognised the device(s). The UPDD Console should show the name(s) of the device(s) at the top of the console and listed in black text, as per this example:

In this case both devices listed in the Device Manager have been detected and correctly listed in the UPDD Console. If no devices are listed or listed in red then the driver has not discovered the devices or is possibly not running:

Double check that the driver is running on the system....
Task Manager under Windows

This shows the 3 processes that comprise the driver, tbupddwu (driver), aidaemon (background task in all OS), tbdaemon (background task in Windows only)

command “ps aux | grep tb" under Linux

root      1209 0.0 0.0 11324 1360 ?        S    08:32   0:00 /bin/sh /opt/tbupddlx/startupdd
root      1211 0.0 0.0   3780   296 ?        Ss   08:32   0:00 startpar -f -- tbupdd
root      7477 0.4 0.3 97064 7156 ?        Sl   08:59   0:00 /opt/tbupddlx/tbupddwu
canto     7633 0.0 0.0 25368   944 ?        S    08:59   0:00 /opt/tbupddlx/tblinuxmouse
canto     7635 0.1 0.3 88720 7076 ?        Sl   08:59   0:00 /opt/tbupddlx/aidaemon

Activity Monitor under Mac OS X

If the UPDD Console status indicates that the driver is not responding:

This could be as a result of:

1) TBupddwu is not running
2) TBupddwu is locked up or stalled
3) Something is blocking the TCP/IP port (4141) used to communicate between the API.

The driver can be manually started from the UPDD folder as follows:

Windows:

tbupddwu -I 4141 (installs the driver as a Windows service - will fail if already installed)

Net Start TBupddwu (starts the driver service - Net Stop tbupddwu can be used to stop the driver)

When correctly running the service should be listed as follows in the Windows Control Panel, Services:

Mac: sudo python "/Library/Application Support/UPDD/upddprocesses.py" start (stop can be used to stop the driver)

Calibration

If all appears OK at both the hardware and software level then you should be able to calibrate. You should be able to touch each calibration point as it is displayed. If calibration is not working then the first cross will not react to touch and eventually the calibration procedure will time out. When you calibrate the calibration application uses the driver's API to receive touch data directly from the driver so successful calibration will prove that the driver is receiving touch data from the device and making it available at the programming interface level.

Operating interface

Having proved that the basic mechanics of the driver are working due to successful calibration the cursor pointer should be moving under the point of touch. If this is not the case this implies the method being used to post touch data into the OS is failing. In all operating systems the driver has two methods of posting touch data into the OS. A useful exercise is to see if either of the methods work, as described below:

OS	Interface method
Windows	Mouse emulation (XP thro' Win 8) or Virtual HID (Vista, Win 7 and Win 8) Under XP, only the mouse interface is utilised. Under Vista, Win 7 or Win 8 you can use mouse or a Virtual HID interface. This is controlled by the Extended Touch check box in the Click Mode dialog: Extended Touch enabled = Virtual HID, disabled = Mouse emulation
Linux	X or Virtual touch device This is controlled by a setting in the UPDD setting file as described here.
Mac	Mouse emulation or Gestures With the driver only loaded the touch is posted as mouse emulation events. With the gesture software loaded the touch data is posted as gesture events. Try either combinations, driver only and driver and gestures.
CE	Mouse emulation or GWES Under CE this is controlled by the cesendinput setting in the UPDD setting file as described here. For GWES interface to work it must be part of the CE image.

Contact Touch-Base support

If you are unable to resolve your problem and need to email Touch-Base please cut and paste the requests below and answer as best as possible:

UPDD driver build id? (as taken from the UPDD Console, About box)
License key? (as taken from the UPDD Console, About Box, Support Information)
Who supplied you the driver?
Operating system in use?
Single or multiple monitor setup?
Description of the problem.
Screen shots showing any issues.
Attach the TBUPDD.INI settings file.

Touch-Base Technical

SLES 10 SP4 issue

Dave Bhattacharjee — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:14:59 GMT

User reported that touch was working at login screen with SP3 but on applying SP4 it no longer worked on the login screen only after login.

We suggested switching to the Virtual Device Interface and touch was reported to be working again at login screen.

Mac video resolution issue

Dave Bhattacharjee — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:13:05 GMT

Customer reported that after installing UPDD driver and switching the primary touch monitor to 90 degree portrait mode the display would entry a strange 830 x 624 resolution instead of the desired 1024 x 768 resolution that was selectable without UPDD installed. This was a one off report which we have never seen or heard of before and cannot reproduce.

We suggested that they try using SwitchResX 4 utility that allows you to switch to all resolutions supported by the video card and monitor and not restricted to the one deemed possible by the OS.

Window 7 Embedded issues

Dave Bhattacharjee — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 10:41:38 GMT

A number of customers have reported that using the UPDD setup program to install the driver does not install all the necessary components and as a consequence of this the touch fails.

We need to investigate this further but suspect it is to do with the EWF settings.

In the cases we have investigated thus far we have found that the .INF files are missing from the UPDD folder (e.g c:\program files\UPDD) and that the driver service is not installed and running. Depending on the EWF settings there could be situations that differ from these observations.

If you have a similar situation to that described here then you can manually correct this as follows:

1) Install the driver on a non embedded Windows system.

2) Copy the .INF files from the UPDD folder to the WES7 equivilant folder.

3) Copy the driver tbupddwu.exe from the UPDD folder to the WES7 equivilant folder.

4) Manually associate the driver with the device as described here.

5) Install the driver service by running the command tbupddwu -I 4141

6) Start the driver by running the command net start tbupdd

Hopefully the driver will now be working. You can now save the WES7 image.

Touch-Base technical

USB controller support

Dave Bhattacharjee — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:18:38 GMT

UPDD driver supports many devices as listed here in a variety of ways. If your device is not listed then we need to identify some USB specific information on your system to help identify the device.

Identifying USB Vendor and product id
To identify a device or add support for a new touch device as a minimum we need to know the device’s vendor and product id. Select the appropriate link here to Windows, Linux, Mac to see how to view this information when the device is connected to a computer. Having identified the Vendor and Product id then if the device is known to us and already configured in our driver we can send a trial driver for testing. Where it is a new touch device we can send a test driver, that may work if it is from a known touch manufacturer already supported with similar touch devices, or which can be used to capture incoming touch data for further analysis.

Touch Data capture
Where a trial or test driver does not work try capturing incoming touch data as described here.

Should you not be able to capture any touch data then read on……

USB interface and endpoint settings
It is possible that the test driver will not capture any touch data. Touch data is sent to the driver on a specific USB interface and this interface can vary between touch devices. With an unknown controller we will default this interface 0. Further each interface has a number of endpoints and by default we will set this to endpoint 1. Only if the data is being delivered on this interface and endpoint will the data be captured. If it is not then we need further information from the system that will show us the correct interface values to set as described here. We can then configure the correct interface and endpoint and send another driver to test.

Multi-touch USB request
Once we have the correct vendor and product id along with the correct interface and end point we should be able to capture the data. However, although a touch device may offer multi-touch functionality it may operate in single touch mode unless it receives notification (a multi-touch USB Feature Request command) from the driver indicating that it supports multi-touch input. This command is sent from a multi-touch aware HID driver (e.g. Windows 7 /8 ) when the device's HID descriptor indicates it can support more than 1 touch. It is for this reason that many multi-touch devices are advertised as Window 7 / 8 compatibility with no mention of other OS. Some multi-touch controllers will output multi-touch data at all times irrespective of the receipt of this request and therefore it is not required.

If the touch controller is multi-touch but the UPDD captured data (under XP, Mac or Linux - traditionally non MT OS) is only in single touch format then we will request that you capture further information on a Windows 7 / 8 device using USBlyzer as the device, if HID compatible, will run in multi-touch mode in these OS.

USBlyzer will capture both the multi-touch USB Feature Request command as sent from the MT HID driver and the touch data sent in MT format. The USB FR command is always 3 bytes but varies between controllers (and is based on the controller’s HID descriptor). This same command will then be issued from our driver to ensure the touch device operates in multi-touch modes, irrespective of OS in use.

Windows system not correctly returning from sleep

Dave Bhattacharjee — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 17:53:34 GMT

Very important BIOS settings issue
A hardware related issue has been reported on some systems with the BIOS settings of UPC and PLD. This has been seen on both standard XP system but also some systems running Windows 7 that have been reverted to XP.

When these systems hibernate or standby they do not return as expected and the system appears totally dead or still displays the “Windows: Preparing to standby…” screen.

Investigation revealed that the driver handles and passes on a IRP request (as expected in power management processing) which is never completed and the driver ‘hangs’ waiting for the completion notice. We suspect this may be a BIOS issue on these particular systems. However, we have experimented with not passing on this IRP request and in tests this did not have any ill effect and the system resumed correctly. Since 4.1.6, build 1389 the following DWORD registry entry can be used to block the driver’s IRP forward processing:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tbupddsu\NoForwardPower=1

A .reg file to set this setting is available here.

Update – 27/09/10 – We discovered on some systems that when returning from hibernate (deep sleep) the USB device was not powered up if the IRP was not processed. In version 4.1.8, build 1880, the driver can detect that the USB device is not powered up and force a stop / start of the device to initiate power up such that the touch continues to work.

Note: We would consider this function to be a hack to overcome a hardware issue and should be used with caution.

Excessive CPU load when setting date and time forward

Dave Bhattacharjee — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 15:06:04 GMT

UPDD driver uses a number of libraries, one being the ACE inter-process communication library. If the system date and time is set forward we are aware that under Windows the CPU usage for 1 core goes to 100% for a period of time. This is because the library has code which when managing an interval based timer skips over intervals that have expired. The fact is that for a 20ms timer this code will loop to skip over as many 20ms intervals as there are in the skipped period. In our tests, setting the time forward 7 years, produced a 100% load on the driver processes for 15 seconds. We also noted a number of other active processes that loaded the system during this time so it appears to be a common issue.

Some customers have issues with this when conducting system tests or loading embedded images with a earlier date so that the date needs to be set forward. Should you experience this then we have modified the code in ACE and recompiled to create patched versions.

We do not intend to ship this patched version as standard as we do not want to maintain a different version of the ACE library and having to apply the same patch to future releases of the library.

Should you encounter this issue and want to use the patched lib they are available here, 32 bit and 64 bit. These should be OK for UPDD version 4.1.8, 4.1.10, 5.0.2 and 5.1.0.

This has only been reported in Windows. This code loop may cause similar issues in other UPDD supported OS if the date and time is set forward.

LG monitor touch driver considerations

Dave Bhattacharjee — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:09:38 GMT

For a number of years LG supplied a range of touch monitors fitted with a resistive touch monitor from a touch company called ITM. These were models T1510, T1710, T1910 and 1730 - there may be others. Over the course of the relationship between LG and ITM they used 3 different touch devices such that when viewing the device properties (under various OS) you could see one of three USB vendor id's; being 16E3, 403 or E316. They all showed the same product id of F9E9.

Until mid 2012 we had a license agreement with ITM such that they could supply our driver with their touch devices. Depending on the version of the driver supplied the device will be listed as 'ITM, LG, USB' or just 'USB'. However in mid 2012 LG switched to using a different touch screen on these monitors and our agreement with ITM was cancelled as they were no longer supplying in bulk to LG.

Although we are unsure of the supplier to LG of the new touch screen we can see that when viewing the device properties of the touch device it is reported as being manufactured by Reakin, model number TS2009F, USB vendor id of 16FD and product id of D091 so we have added support in our driver for this device which is called 'Reakin, TS2009F, USB'. The new touch screen is HID compatible and as such should work with the HID driver in Windows 7 once calibrated using the Tablet PC option in the Windows control panel. Under XP the touch will work but may be uncalibrated.

Examples of how to view the device properties are here; Windows, Mac, Linux.

The confusion arises in that in some cases the old driver is being supplied with the new touch screen, or users are replacing / repairing LG monitors and receiving the new touch screen and wondering why the UPDD driver no longer functions.

The final version 4.1.10 driver we supplied to ITM can be downloaded from here:
http://touch-base.com/downloads/Production/ITM/setup.exe
This works for windows XP through to Windows 7. Please note that LG seem to still be shipping UPDD 4.1.6. This is quite an old version and has an issue when uninstalled on Windows 7 as described in our Windows driver documentation:
Very important note: With any UPDD version 4.x.x prior to 4.1.8 the uninstall process removes the UPDD entries from the Program Manager menu from the low level updd menu item entry back thro’ the program Manager tree until an error is issued that the top level menu items cannot be removed. Under Win 7 no such error is issued and custom user icons are removed from the high level menu. A system restore is needed to restore the icons. Therefore, please avoid using the automatic uninstall on Window 7 unless using UPDD 4.1.8 or above.

Should you require an upgrade to the ITM driver, such as to UPDD version 5 that supports Windows 8, we can offer an upgrade cost of 50% discount on our published prices. Prices for drivers for the new touch device are as published.

To support either device in systems whereby the HID driver does not correctly support the touch device (i.e. Win XP, Mac OS X, Linux, CE, Solaris etc) you are likely to require drivers which we can supply. Trial drivers for either device is available from our download centre.

Finally, to confuse things further, the touch screen used on the Dell ST2220T monitor is listed as a LG, Multi-touch, USB device and this is a totally different touch device altogether. We do offer drivers for this device which we list as 'Dell, ST2220T, USB'.