I replaced the old display in my VF-1 inspired home cockpit with a touch panel. The previous display was salvaged from a laptop years ago and had a poor viewing angle. To improve this I experimented with an anti-glare foil that reduced the annoying reflections. However, the viewing angle remained poor, of course. To address this, I decided to go all in with a touch panel kit.
Video: https://makertube.net/w/t2MfAwygD7pWYrMtnn96mT / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54nY9OdTAmc
The display model is N173HCE-E31, a 17.3" with a resolution of 1920x1080 and HDR support. The touch controller registers as a USB HID pointer/mouse by ILITEK and is basically a transparent touch sensing foil sitting on top of the display.
The kit included a PCB that was advertised as VS-RTD2556HC-V2 by VSDISPLAY but came without any data sheet. It is not clear to me who really made it. Also this PCB runs very hot and it’s voltage was not explicitly stated. I slapped a heat sink with a tiny fan on top on it and tried different configurations. It does work with just 5V at ~2A but I feel way more comfortable with 12V at ~0.8A, where it’s getting only slightly warm to the touch after running for an hour.
However, the controller ignores it’s own PSU the moment USB-C is used for the display signal, and none of my devices with DP ALT could provide enough juice to power it over that, resulting in a reboot loop. The only device this worked with was my Viture XR charging adapter, which can indeed provide enough juice to power both the controller and other devices simultaneously.
To work around this issue I went back to using HDMI + PD along with USB2 for the touch panel signal. An additional fan is connected to the PCB’s micro USB2 socket providing the fan with 5V. This worked well, but the result in a cable mess, that I initially wanted to omit. I wish I had a data sheet for this.
To fix the reflective glare, I went with a screen protector by BROTEC, which promises both anti-scratch and anti-glare effects without limiting any view angles. Attaching the foil was straightforward, but it is important to make sure that there are no dust particles around during the process. To help with this, I used an air humidifier to raise the humidity in the room before starting. After that I removed the protective cover from the display and started slapping on the foil with the provided mounting card (yay, cardboard again). I had to make good use of the also provided adhesive sticker to catch all dust particles in the end. Mostly thanks to one of my cats that decided to investigate what I was doing.
The end result is a dramatic improvement for the panel. I do no longer see the light sources or myself clearly reflected on the display. The touch panel is still accepting inputs just fine and the colors look very bright from any angle, especially with HDR enabled. This also eases cleaning because the cockpit panel is collecting dust like crazy due to it’s angle. I usually use a vacum cleaner for this and the foil will help a lot to avoid scratches.
Ah yes and now that I have a touch panel I also started rewriting my HUD app, of course 🙃
Find a writeup of this video on https://beko.famkos.net/2026/01/14/switching-to-a-touch-panel-display-in-my-vf-1-inspired-home-cockpit-panel/ or on https://hackaday.io/project/192860-primary-buffer-panel-v2/log/245655-switching-to-a-touch-panel-display-in-my-vf-1-inspired-home-cockpit-panel/ with some more details, that didn’t make it into the video.