This article explains how you can upgrade your existing touch screen hardware to the Linux operating system, Ubuntu. If you are reading this, it is likely you have scanned the code on one of our upgrade USB device, but if you haven’t and want one please get in touch





WARNING This process completely wipes the previous installation and all data will be lost. This should not be an issue for a touch screen, but for this reason we strongly recommend not plugging the USB device into any PC you value!


Getting started

What you will need:

  • A touchscreen

  • A USB Keyboard

  • One of our USB Upgrade devices

  • About an hour for the upgrade to run





1. Turn the screen off.


2. Plug the keyboard into one of the spare ports on the USB device. 




3. Next, insert the USB device into the port at the bottom of your screen. We’re showing one of our Engage touchscreens here, but you can use any accessible USB port on your third party hardware.




(Tip: If you have a choice and the port has a blue connector inside it, use that one. These ports are higher speed and the upgrade will take a little less time to run.)





4. Turn the screen back on.


Booting from the USB Device

This is the trickiest part of the process to navigate. Your screen will be set up to try and boot first off the internal hard disk and ignore any external devices (Security best practice). 


What we need to do is tell it to boot from the USB device you’ve just plugged in. Although what you see on the screen may vary, the process is likely very similar whatever hardware you have. Considering the long life of some of our Engage hardware, things will look different on our screens as well, so we’ll try to generalise.


The thing that tells a computer how to start is its Built In Operating System (BIOS). That’s what shows the various messages you see before the Windows loading spinner comes up. Normally, you can enter the boot menu by hitting a function key as the computer starts up; examples of a few are shown below.




You may receive a password prompt at this stage. If it’s Engage hardware, it is set to T0uch13 as a default (That’s T, Zero, u, c, h, one, three). If that doesn’t work, you’ll need to talk to your IT provider.




The boot menu you now see will again vary between systems but you want to select General USB which is our upgrade device.



The system will now start the upgrade process, starting with a screen that looks like this. 

It’ll take up to an hour to run, depending on hardware and internet speeds, but when it’s complete it’ll reboot into this screen. 



Final setup

Go into your management console and head to the “Appointment Arrivals/Touchscreens” section to enter the pairing code displayed on the screen. If you’ve upgraded an old installation, you’ll probably need to “Reset Touchscreen” first.




Once you hit “Save” at the foot of the page, the screen will flip to be ready for use. Run though a test arrival to make sure that the screen is responding to touch correctly.


Calibration issues

Some screens might require re-calibration after the upgrade. If this is the case, follow the following steps:


Restart the screen, keeping the USB device and keyboard inserted. (You can use a mouse if you have one, but it’s not easy with a screen installed!)




When you get to this screen, hit Tab to select Settings




TAB through to Controller


Tab down to basic setup


Tab to OK this dialogue


Then follow the on-screen instructions. Once complete, you can ALT+F4 to exit the program and the screen will then auto-start.


Wrapping up

With the screen working, you’re done and can remove the USB device. If you’ve no more screens to upgrade, pop it in the pre-paid envelope to get it back to us. Alternatively, if you know of other sites near you that want to try it out please feel free to give it to them; just let us know so we can keep track of the USB devices.


Troubleshooting

I don’t get any options to choose a boot device    Sometimes your computer might be configured to not show a menu. In this case, the keyboard shortcuts might still work. Try rebooting whilst tapping F7, F8, F10 or F12 (Common ones) and see if that works.


I still can’t get it to boot from USB    

This option might be disabled. If we try tapping F1, F2, Escape or Delete on boot this might get you into the full BIOS screen. From here it might be best to give us a call, but if you can find a “Boot” section you should be able to force the system to boot from USB here



My screen is booting from USB but fails to install    

This is probably down to the specifics of your screen and is going to be hard to talk you through in general terms First, get into the BIOS as described above. Things to look out for are having secure boot enabled (disable it) or not having UEFI as a boot method. If you have no joy here, you can send the base unit to us on a no fix-no fee basis to see if we can sort it out for you.