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Minimum cost to repurpose an iPad mini into an in wall touchscreen?


pinkoos

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My younger will be moving on up to an iPhone soon and so will not have much use for his retina iPad mini 2, 64GB.

I was thinking about repurposing it into an in wall touchscreen rather than selling it, but wanted to see what the minimum outlay would be first.

I'm guessing costs involved would be:

-Some kind of custom in wall power supply?

-dry wall cutting and in wall mounting solution?

Is there anything else I'm missing?  How would the power supply work?  Are there any places that make custom mounts for the mini?

I know the 64GB is overkill to just have the C4 app running all the time, which brings me to my next question:

Would an original iPad mini 1 (non-retina, 16GB) suffice or would it be too slow?  My wife has this iPad mini and solely uses it for a couple of low intensity games.  If this would work well as a C4 touchscreen, she could always take my son's mini for herself and I could use her mini for C4.

Thanks in advance.

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The mini 2 is probably better though a mount that can accommodate the 1st gen works for the 2nd.

As far as power goes most I have seen are 24v dc or PoE so to be compliant with code and not hiding a power supply in the wall tapped off of a 120v feed coming from a light receptacle box a wire has to be ran. 

 

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1 hour ago, pinkoos said:

My younger will be moving on up to an iPhone soon and so will not have much use for his retina iPad mini 2, 64GB.

I was thinking about repurposing it into an in wall touchscreen rather than selling it, but wanted to see what the minimum outlay would be first.

I'm guessing costs involved would be:

-Some kind of custom in wall power supply?

-dry wall cutting and in wall mounting solution?

Is there anything else I'm missing?  How would the power supply work?  Are there any places that make custom mounts for the mini?

I know the 64GB is overkill to just have the C4 app running all the time, which brings me to my next question:

Would an original iPad mini 1 (non-retina, 16GB) suffice or would it be too slow?  My wife has this iPad mini and solely uses it for a couple of low intensity games.  If this would work well as a C4 touchscreen, she could always take my son's mini for herself and I could use her mini for C4.

Thanks in advance.

I’d use the C4 touchscreen. We originally had a dedicated iPad in-wall (with some third party box-contraption) and the iPad simply wasn’t the same as C4 touchscreen. Responsiveness wasn’t there and the screen would come out of dedicated C4 mode periodically. I’d just suck it up and buy C4 made touch screen. They rock. 

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We have explored this route too... Despite being an all-Apple household, we had a older Android-based tablet that we decided to re-purpose for a dedicated C4 screen.  So far it has worked perfectly.  However, there aren't a lot of wall-mounts available for 8-year-old Samsung tablets so we have it on a basically home-made table stand in our kitchen. :( It's permanently plugged in, screensaver disabled, and the box in the C4 App's preferences is ticked so that it's always connected.  Flawless, but not the prettiest of solutions.

I re-purposed my son's old, heavy, non-mini iPad for use as a touchscreen in my theater. Still waiting on the build to be finished in that room, so results are not conclusive, but so far seems to work well.

The C4 app is not, in my experience, especially resource intensive... the Mini 1 should be just fine running it.

For wall mounting iPad, the solutions from iPort are the gold standard: https://iportproducts.com . However, be prepared to pay for them in gold bricks. (Pricing available on their website.)

I found that by the time I get an iPad, even a used one from eBay, and a decent mount, I'm approaching used touchscreen prices anyway. If you already have the iPad, it changes the calculus somewhat, but still...

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Thanks for the replies.  I have two touchscreens in the house and they are slow.  I forget which model they are, but they're the ones that came out right before the supposedly fast, Android based ones were released.  I don't think I'm going to buy anymore Touchscreens.  Either I'll jerry-rig an iPad mini like described above, or just use the app on my phone, the remote, or the TV C4 screen.

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I have been toying with the same idea and did come across this company that has mounts for a several different tablet and iPad models: https://www.vidabox.com/kiosks/

They don't appear quite as nice as the iPort models, but are substantially cheaper. 

Anyone attempted using a Kindle Fire for a wall-mounted touch screen? I know there are some workarounds to get dedicated mode to work (i.e., making Android just keep the screen on), but they seem like they'd be a nice option being you can routinely snag an HD8 for $50. 

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On 2/1/2018 at 1:25 PM, rea said:

I have been toying with the same idea and did come across this company that has mounts for a several different tablet and iPad models: https://www.vidabox.com/kiosks/

 

I used the Vidabox in-wall mounts for a couple of ipad mini's I bought off ebay.  Went with the POE version.  Had them painted to match my trim.  They look great and ipad's have worked flawlessly.

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1 hour ago, tratliff said:

I used the Vidabox in-wall mounts for a couple of ipad mini's I bought off ebay.  Went with the POE version.  Had them painted to match my trim.  They look great and ipad's have worked flawlessly.

Thanks...that's really good to know!

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I’ve used a crestron iPad wall mount for an iPad Air, it has poe power built in. Works awesome. Now sure if they make a wall mount for a mini but I’m pretty sure they make a table top kit for a mini. eBay has them all the time. 

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I prefer the Iport mounts over the others mentioned.  They have some that allow you to remove the device without leaving anything ugly behind, which allows the ipads to me multi purpose.  That said, I fond the time it takes for the ipads to connect to the sytem to be annoying and much prefer the C-4 T3 touch pads for wall and tabletop units. In the end the price is the same and they just work better.   We do use an ipad/ipod combo in the kitchen though so the ipad can also be used for looking up  recipes and stuff while cooking. 

 

https://iportproducts.com/e2k1ufpbzc4dvkqn0lb32lf2ec1qhv

 

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