How to - Ubuntu 12.04 Touchscreen calibration

Submitted by The Fan Club on

This guide is based on the Ubuntu Wiki - Multitouch documentation and various community forum posts.

This guide is intended as a relatively easy step by step mostly graphical (GUI) guide to:

  • Calibrate a touchscreen panel or monitor on Ubuntu 11.04 or later.

Requirements:

  • Ubuntu 11.04 or later installed machine.
  • Touchscreen panel or monitor. In this case a LG Flatron T1710 Monitor.

 

1. Install uTouch - Ubuntu Multitouch framework.

  • uTouch is installed by default in Ubuntu 11.04, if not installed on your system add it from the Software Center or with the following command.
  • Open the Terminal Window and enter :
sudo apt-get install utouch

2. Install xinput calibrator.

  • xinput calibrator is a easy GUI Touchscreen Calibration program for X.Org. Install it from the Ubuntu Software Center or using the command below.
  • Open the Terminal Window and enter :
sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator

3. Use xinput calibrator to determine the x and y co-ordinates of your touchscreen.

  • Now we use xinput calibrator  to measure the xMin, xMax, yMin and yMax values of the touchscreen.
  • Launch xinput calibrator (Called Calibrate Touchscreen in the ubuntu program menus)
  • Use a stylus to tap the four registration point indicated in red on screen by the program.

4. Note the results from xinput calibrator.

  • Make a note of the calibration data supplied by xinput calibrator, but ignore the instruction supplied regarding making the calibration permanent.

 

5. Update X11 evdev configuration.

  • Once you have determined the x and y co-ordinate information, you need to add it to the X11 configuration files, for the evdev driver, the default installed driver used for handling Touchscreen input events.
  • The X11 configuration for the Touchscreen can be found in the ​/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf file.
  • Edit the file, find the Touchscreen InputClass and add: Option "Calibration"  "xMin xMax yMin yMax" 
  • Replace the xMin, xMax, yMin and  yMax values with your values obtained in step 4. 
  • Open the Terminal Window and enter :
sudo gedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf
  • Then add calibration option settings obtained in Step 5 to the touchscreen InputClass section: 
Option "Calibration" "96 3914 155 3899"

​

6. Logout to Restart X11.

  • Finally to enable your calibartion settings log out and back in again to restart X11.

 

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Comments

Just a little thing... i will

Submitted by z666zz666z (not verified) on

Just a little thing... i will try it.. but... My stylus is perfectly calibrated, but when i use my fingers it is not. You tell only one calibration, so how can i correct the finger one. In other words... the touchscreen of my Notebook has two ways to work... with a stylus (that is working perfectly) and touching the screen with human finggers (that is not correctly calibrated). Since here is only one calibration, how can i make to work both at the same time? Any way i will try it (after backuping of course), i use much more the sylus than the fingers, so i do not want to loose that at all. Thanks for the info.

Maybe you should use the

Submitted by Stylised Response (not verified) on

Maybe you should use the stylus.

This tool seems to be

Submitted by Bart Houkes (not verified) on

This tool seems to be integrated in the Xubuntu desktop 12.10, however after calibration it is not done. Also after reset it is not done. Should I start this as root or what?

Did you add the option line

Submitted by The Fan Club on

Did you add the option line to the config file ? I have not tried it on Xubuntu - but in normal Ubuntu the calibration does not seem to take effect until the user has logged in, on some machines. Then it all works perfectly in Unity Desktop. You need not start the program as root. To edit the config file you need root permission as shown.

Thank you

Submitted by gerhard (not verified) on

Thank you

it wont let me save the 10

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

it wont let me save the 10-evdev.conf file

Make sure you use sudo. Then

Submitted by The Fan Club on

Make sure you use sudo. Then it might let you save the file.

Hello,

Submitted by Lelfic (not verified) on

Hello, I tryed this method some times, but it's not working. I tried under gnome and lxde, with the same (un)result : the calibration is not saved. The file is modified well, but at the reboot, it's like not calibrated.

Hello

Submitted by The Fan Club on

No idea what the issue is - only tested on Ubuntu with Unity.