How do I calibrate a touchscreen on a dual monitor system?

Question

I have a dual monitor setup of two different sizes. My primary monitor is a 23 in widescreen Acer T230H touchscreen, and the second is a regular 20 in. When I go to use the touchscreen, the cursor shows up on the secondary display depending on where I touch the display. How do I calibrate it to only control my primary monitor?

Answer 1

As Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin suggested in a comment, I used the following command to map an input device to an output screen:

xinput map-to-output <device> <output>

To figure out which is which, I first ran xinput to list the input devices. From that listing, I observed that my touchscreen was "QUANTA Optical Touch Screen" and listed as device id 12. I then ran xrandr to determine the touchscreen, which in my case was VGA1.

Simply entering the following command then did the trick:

xinput map-to-output 12 VGA1

Answer 2

As Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin and Paul Lammertsma suggested in above comments xinput map-to-output <device> <output> did the trick for me!

you first need to run xinput to get the id of inupt device,

the above command return something like this for me.

user@user-hpEnvy:~$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:401b   id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:4016   id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ELAN20E7:00 04F3:20E7                     id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=15   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP Truevision HD                          id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP Wireless hotkeys                       id=16   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP WMI hotkeys    

Next I ran xrandr to get the list of screens and the output of the command is like this

user@user-hpEnvy:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 382mm x 215mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+   59.9     40.0  
   1680x1050      60.0     59.9  
   1600x1024      60.2  
   1400x1050      60.0  
   1280x1024      60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1360x768       59.8     60.0  
   1152x864       60.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3     56.2  
   640x480        59.9  
HDMI1 connected primary 1920x1080+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 600mm x 340mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+   50.0     59.9  
   1680x1050      59.9  
   1600x900       60.0  
   1280x1024      60.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x720       60.0     50.0     59.9  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3  
   720x576        50.0  
   720x480        60.0     59.9  
   640x480        60.0     59.9  
   720x400        70.1  
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

In my case the touch device is ELAN20E7:00 04F3:20E7 id=13 and touch enabled screen is eDP1 to fix the issue i need to map the device the that monitor only for that i ran this command xinput map-to-output 13 eDP1

Problem solved and its working fine again :)

I am using elementary OS freya, so it should work for all distros based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Answer 3

Very hard to find solution but actually pretty straight forward, just follow the answer from 'phnomic' here: Touchscreen and additional external monitor. Works flawless with my Fujitsu T730 with all kinds of external monitors!

Answer 4

Have you tried using xinput-calibrator?

Answer 5

At least for Wacom touchscreens, there is the additional issue that they stop working after a suspend-and-resume cycle. So they first have to be attached again and then calibrate for dual monitor usage. Here is a solution that does both:

1. Create (and then test) a custom systemd service to re-attach your touchscreen when the system comes back from suspend, using my other answer here.

2. Create a script /usr/local/bin/local-touchscreen-tweaks with the following content:

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   We need to sleep about 2 seconds after the start of the wacom-inputattach
   service, or the touchscreen device will not yet be there to work with.
   sleep 2
   xsetwacom needs to connect to an X server.
   export XAUTHORITY=/home/matthias/.Xauthority
   export DISPLAY=:0
   Tell the touch devices to interpret input relative to the physical
   touchscreen display only, here LVDS-1. Needed in multi-monitor setups.
   Use device names as seen in xinput --list.
   xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled 2FG Touchscreen Pen stylus" MapToOutput LVDS-1
   xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled 2FG Touchscreen Pen eraser" MapToOutput LVDS-1
   xsetwacom set "Wacom Serial Penabled 2FG Touchscreen Finger touch" MapToOutput LVDS-1
   

3. Set up your desktop environment to execute that script when X starts, for example via the autostart mechanism. It would be better to do that via systemd service, but I did not yet try this.

4. Create the following custom service, used to execute your script when the system returns from resume. It runs after service restart-wacom-inputattach created in step 1 above, using the mechanism demonstrated here. For that, create a file /etc/systemd/system/local-touchscreen-tweaks.service with this content:

   [Unit]
   Description=calibrate the touchscreen for dual-monitor usage
   After=restart-wacom-inputattach.service
   [Service]
   User=root
   Type=oneshot
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/local-touchscreen-tweaks
   TimeoutSec=0
   StandardOutput=syslog
   [Install]
   WantedBy=suspend.target
   

5. Enable your new custom service with:

   sudo systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/local-touchscreen-tweaks.service
   

Answer 6

I ran into a similar issue. I switch between using 2 and 4 touch screen monitors, all of which show the exact same name and changing device ID's, making all of the solutions I found pretty much useless. So, I wrote my own script. It captures the the ID's using xinput and the xrandr to capture the available displays. If you don't have Yad installed, it will attempt to install it.

It then uses Yad to popup a confirmation box in the corners of your monitors. Click ok, if the click does not hit the 'OK', it assumes your display and touch inputs are mismatched and attempts to match to the next until you actually hit 'OK'. Then it moves on to the next monitor.

This has to be ran everytime I log in, whether it's a reboot or my system was locked, but I set mine to run when I hit win+f (F for fix my crap), so it's pretty quick and painless to reset everything. I've yet to find a way to make it persistent. I also keep the code on git-hub. Any updates I make, I will post there (https://github.com/pvtcompyle/set-touch). If anyone can think of a way to make this kind of setup persistent, I would love to hear about it!

#!/bin/bash
# This script requires yad to be installed. If it is not installed, run:
# sudo apt install yad
check for yad installation
monkg -l "yad"
if [ $? = '1' ]
then
   printf "Yad is not installed"
   sudo apt install yad
fi
run xinput and find the search text for your touch screens, then set it below
screenSearch="Touch"
run xrandr and find the search text for your monitors, then set it below
monintorSearch="DisplayPort-"
dump xinput id's xrandr monitor searches into arrays
idArr=($(xinput | grep $screenSearch | awk '{gsub("id=",""); print $7}'))
monArr=($(xrandr | grep -E "$monintorSearch[0-9] connected" | awk -F '[-" "]' '{print $2}'))
cdate=($(date -I'seconds'))
these are x and y coordinates to place pop-up alerts.
adjust for your preference, screen resolution, and number of monitors.
if fewer monitors are detected than are defined here, it's ok.
to find your coordinates run the following from a terminal:
yad --posx=<number> --posy=<number>
monx=(1620 2120 1620 2120)
mony=(880 880 1180 1180)
loop through monitors.
for mon in "${monArr[@]}"
do
   index=0
   declare -i mon
loop through touch screen id's
for id in "${idArr[@]}"
   do
      declare -i id
      xinput map-to-output $id $monintorSearch$mon
      # pop up box at monx and mony coordinates. Tap OK, if it's registered on the wrong screen, it will prompt again.
      yad --posx=${monx[$mon]} --posy=${mony[$mon]} --close-on-unfocus --title="stuff" --text="Matching input: $id to Monitor: $mon."
      result=$?
      case $result in
         0)
            idArr=(${idArr[@]/$id})
            break
            ;;
         252)
            ((index=index+=1))
            ;;
         *)
            echo 'Unknown input' $result 
            ;;
      esac
   done
done