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Gene Mosher edited this page Dec 24, 2021 · 39 revisions

Welcome to the ViewTouch wiki!

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Important GitHub GUI tip > Click on those three dots at right, then select 'Insights', then select 'Network'.


In 1986 ViewTouch® was the world's first, original restaurant point of sale (PoS) solution on the Atari ST. ViewTouch is currently based on Debian Linux and The X Window System. ViewTouch runs on the various and very popular Raspberry Pi computers. The official ViewTouch computer is the ViewTouch/Chipsee all-in-one Raspberry Pi touchscreen computer.

ViewTouch is a Point of Sale Window Manager for Linux with an integrated Graphical Toolkit so anyone can build a touchscreen interface (i.e., a complete hospitality point of sale and workgroup solution) with one's own unique menu and table layout. Standard graphical resolution is Full High Definition (1920x1080). The unique nature of point of sale software is that the user interface is unique for each user and can therefore only be completed by the end user. This task is achieved by users and the integrated Graphical Toolkit. In ViewTouch, we invoke the Toolkit by logging in as user 'Editor' and toggling 'Edit Mode' with the F1 key.

The Raspberry Pi image used in the ViewTouch Chipsee computer is available for download here !. The ViewTouch Image download includes the ViewTouch Point of Sale desktop, script-based icons, a customized /boot/config.txt file and links to various useful userland packages explained in the DeskTop section of the Wiki. Everything one needs, quite literally at one's fingertips! Decompression of the image file requires dtrx, Xarchiver or Xstd. Writing of the decompressed image file is handled nicely by ddrescue (using the -f argument), or Raspberry Pi Imager, available for all platforms.

There is an icon (a blue sphere) on the ViewTouch RPi desktop which runs a bash script, pull.sh to download, compile, link and install the most recent source code which is available at Github.

ViewTouch makes extensive use of the network transparency of the X Window System to drive multiple 'remote' graphical input displays by leverages the secure (i.e., SSH) remote display capabilities of 'X'. The Raspberry Pi Zero W adequately drives a touchscreen as remote graphical terminals.

The default logon ID for Editor is '123456789'. This logon ID can be changed.

Restaurateurs wishing training and 24/7 support should contact Gene through the information at http://www.viewtouch.com/contact.html