Calibrating Touchscreen - ArchWiki

# Calibrating Touchscreen

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Notes: please use the second argument of the template to provide more detailed indications. (Discuss)

To use multiple displays (some of which are touchscreens), you need to tell Xorg the mapping between the touch surface and the screen. This can be done using `xinput` to set the touchscreen's coordinate transformation matrix, as described in the X.Org Wiki.

This shall be a guide to do that.

You will need to run the `xinput` command every time you attach the monitor or log in. Or course, you can add the command to your session-autostart. You can also use Udev to automate this; more details to follow once I get it working myself.

## Using nVidia's TwinView

### Get to know your system

#### Your screen

Using TwinView, X will see all your Screens as one big screen. You can get your total height and width by executing

    $ xrandr

. You should see a line like this:

     3600x1230      50.0*

what means, your total width is 3600 and your total height is 1230.

#### Your touch device

Your next job is to get your device's name. Execute

    $ xinput list

and find it by it's name. E.g. if the line can look like this

    ⎜   ↳ Acer T230H                              	id=24	[slave  pointer  (2)]

your device name is

    Acer T230H

Execute

    xinput list-props "Device Name"

and make sure there is a property called

    Coordinate Transformation Matrix

(If not, you may probably selected the wrong device)

#### Touch area

You need to shrink your touch area into a rectangle which is smaller than the total screen. This means, you have to know four values:

- Height of touch area
- Width of touch area
- horizontal offset (x offset) (amount of pixels between the left edge of your total screen and the left edge of your touch area)
- vertical offset (y offset) (amount of pixels between the top edge of your total screen and the top edge of your touch area)

### Calculate the Coordinate Transformation Matrix

Now, calculate these as accurate as possible:

- c0 = touch_area_width / total_width
- c2 = touch_area_height / total_height
- c1 = touch_area_x_offset / total_width
- c3 = touch_area_y_offset / total_height

The matrix is

    [ c0 0  c1 ]
    [ 0  c2 c3 ]
    [ 0  0  1  ]

which is represented as a row-by-row array:

    c0 0 c1 0 c2 c3 0 0 1

### Apply the Matrix

Execute

    xinput set-prop "Device Name" --type=float "Coordinate Transformation Matrix" c0 0 c1 0 c2 c3 0 0 1

e.g.

    xinput set-prop "Acer T230H" --type=float "Coordinate Transformation Matrix" 0.533333333 0 0 0 0.87804878 0.12195122 0 0 1

to calibrate your touchscreen device. Now, it should work properly.

## Troubleshooting

If, after following these instructions, multiple clicks occur in different places when you touch the screen, you will need to build the xorg-server package using the ABS, applying this patch before you build the package. (This patch fails on the current xorg source, but the bug is present on at least 1 system.)

## See also

Calibrate Translation Matrix Documentation in the X.Org Wiki

Category:

- Input devices