iKitchen – DIY Touch Screen Wall-Mount Computer
This New Zealand modder decided to make a touch screen PC for his kitchen so his wife could keep inventory of their food, print out shopping lists, access the web, watch TV and use it as a normal PC. First, he found a cheap touch screen monitor which would form the heart of the device. These screens are used in vending machines and public places in Japan so they are vandal-proof and water-proof which is perfect for the kitchen environment.
**Note** This post was first published six months before the iPad was released.
For the PC aspect of the project, he decided to build one from scratch. You could use any old machine left lying around but he decided it would be best for performance to custom build it. He settled on specs such as 4GB of RAM, a 3.20Ghz processor and an 800Gb hard drive. This would all be stored in a small cabinet near where the screen would be mounted for maintenance purposes. Wires run from the cabinet, through the drywall, to the touch screen.
Once he had everything running, he needed a better interface than the standard Windows desktop. He used a program called Active Desktop which enabled him to replicate the iPhone menu style. He calls his creation iKitchen. For the touch screen keyboard, he went with a quality program called Comfort On-Screen Keyboard which vastly improved the typing experience when compared with the standard on-screen windows keyboard.
On top of that, he added a barcode scanner for groceries and a TV tuner! Awesome project to add to our case mod collection.
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January 21st, 2010
Sweet!
January 25th, 2010
Nice idea, but a touch screen would be awful in the kitchen, with your hands constantly covered in grease. Probably would get just as gross as the can opener
January 25th, 2010
lol, good point. Meh, just have a rule to wash your hands first and you’ll be good to go.
January 28th, 2010
Very impressive, I just had the thought of this in the living room, how much easier it would be than coming home and fideling with the computer and mouse, and desk, and all of ny kids strolled stuff…lol Are you going to patent it?
February 1st, 2010
Carley, what would he patent? The parts that he bought?
February 1st, 2010
Love the idea, I kind of want to make one for myself… specially now with windows 7 around
February 1st, 2010
Touch screen a bad idea in the kitchen? That is the IDEAL solution for in the kitchen. Would you rather use a keyboard and mouse? If you are using a touch screen and get grease or other things on a touch screen all you would have to do is wipe it off.
February 1st, 2010
Amazing… and iPad that works…
the iWall
February 1st, 2010
Good idea, horrible placement. I agree with the kitchen being a bad place for it to be due to dirty, sticky fingers. But what I find worse is the fact that it’s over a counter. So in order to type on the screen you need to lean over the counter…
February 2nd, 2010
Using a Dell constitutes building your own from scratch?
February 2nd, 2010
Well, the point was to have it in the kitchen…
A touch screen is better and easier to clean than a mouse and keyboard. I am sure you could find a clean finger to use if you really need to while in the middle of making cookies or meatloaf… Great idea. I would probable use a mini-itx computer just save power and reduce heat in the cramped cupboard though. That particular dell model is loud and hot.
February 2nd, 2010
Isn’t 3.2 GHz and 800GB a bit overkill for a kitchen inventory machine? Seriously, why do you need THAT much power?
February 2nd, 2010
I was thinking this project was actually cool until you revealed that it was a Windows-driven machine. What a disaster.
Linux would have made this a lot better, especially since you probably wouldn’t have had to do a single hack to make the custom interface like you did for Windows. Linux’s flexibility is unparralelled. You wouldn’t have had to fumble around with the ungainle Active Desktop sofware since Linux actually does full theming out of the box, unlike Windows.
That and Linux is always faster, always more stable, and always more secure than Windows.
Linux would have been far more ideal for this sort of project then inflexible proprietary old Windows.
And a big, fat paycheck says you would have had that touchscreen working out of the box on Linux.
Hell you could have easily even custom-programmed a WM or DE for X that handled the entire interface.
February 3rd, 2010
Linux fanboy anyone?
February 4th, 2010
Wow, no kidding. Trust a Linux lover to miss the big picture. (Pun intended) She raises a good point though. Kudos to the modder at any rate – obviously a resourceful person!
March 27th, 2010
Doesn’t seem very practical. Either have to keep the thing running all day long, or wait for it to boot when you want to do whatever sort of kitchen bookkeeping requires 800 GB. It’d be easier and cheaper to just put a notepad on the wall.
April 10th, 2010
Why don’t you buy iPad?
April 10th, 2010
This came out long before the iPad was available.
April 25th, 2010
im my day we used pencil and paper to write shopping lists its about $800 cheaper and does the same job, of course you could always upgrade to pen and paper but that would have cost another dollar but hey what can i say i liked to splash out.
This just seems unneccasary to me unless it is linked to functions in the rest of the house such as climate control, lighting, webcam security cameras, a front door cam and maybe skype.
April 27th, 2010
LOL 4GB RAM in WXP?
it should be 64 bits, or better, upgrade to 7…
June 29th, 2010
Great idea! I don’t mind it over the counter. I bet the family is a tall family. and it it’s over the counter it’s a lot harder for children to reach and break.
July 6th, 2010
@rob
well obviously you can do it the old school way, but i’m sure its connected to the internet which means limitless recipes in front of you, i believe there was also a tv tuner which means you could watch cooking shows in the kitchen etc. its not just for printing out shopping lists. and from the looks of the pictures it seems to have music and skype.
@27
could just be a dell case, not necessarily dell on the inside.
November 23rd, 2010
Isn’t 3.2 GHz and 800GB a bit overkill for a kitchen inventory machine? Seriously, why do you need THAT much power?
January 20th, 2011
add a laser keyboard to this that projects on the counter-top and you have a first class project here. http://www.amazon.com/iTech-Wireless-Virtual-Laser-Keyboard/dp/tech-data/B00142C4O8 there cheap.