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Displays Hardware Technology

Suggestions for Reliable Touch Screen Displays? 46

Posted by Cliff from the lleave-the-rodent-let-your-fingers-do-the-talking dept.
seigniory asks: "I'm looking to put about 20 touchscreen displays into operation as information kiosks in low-traffic areas (i.e. private waiting rooms, not malls). The application is written, but is mouse-driven, so a conversion to touch screen is necessary. At present, I'm imagining a 12-15" LDC with active-matrix, but will entertain other suggestions. Without much experience with the quality and durability of most touchscreen solutions, or the 'gotcha's' of converting an existing app to touchscreen, I'm at a loss as to where I should begin. I can't start the touchscreen w/o the actual screen, and I don't have a ton of money to play with yet, so I can't afford to waste money trying to find my ideal solution. Searches for 'LCD Touchscreen Display Reviews' has turned up not much more than ads. What experiences or advice can Slashdot offer?"
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Suggestions for Reliable Touch Screen Displays? More

Suggestions for Reliable Touch Screen Displays?

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  • lead (Score:2, Funny)

    by shaitand ( 626655 )
    If you cover the touchscreen with a 6inch thick lead shield I hear it greatly increases reliability and durability.

  • Quality does matter! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jptechnical ( 644454 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:34AM (#7731833) Homepage

    Speaking from experience working with both food service companies and small mailbox etc. type stores, you will suffer if you get the cheapest available.

    Biggest problem was inaccuracy or under sensitivity (the sense screen far enough off the display that viewing angle made it a pain to calibrate) and it just wearing out from use.

    In the case of the small post office place, they decided that the amount of typing made the touchscreen a bad option since it was difficult to say the least for typing.

    What kind of industry is this for? Is a mouse or trackball surface mounted out of the question? I know that the mouse/trackball is real short money.

    • DigitalWW [digitalww.com] sells products aimed at people who want screens and such in their cars but they offer 12.1inch and smaller touch kits.

      I know lots of people think very highly of the 7inch (most common size in cars) and the rest should be of the same quality

  • to look. Sure you don't get 3rd party reviews, but the prices are pretty good and you can get all sorts of kiosk and OEM parts. Touch screen technologies are discussed and can be added to any display. uhhh link. [earthlcd.com]
    • Coincidently, I was looking at that website recently, to get a small LCD screen (the one here) [earthlcd.com]. Unfortunately, they don't sell a controller board or anything. How am I supposed to link it to a computer without an appropriate connector? Can anyone help?
      • Well, this LCD isn't designed to just "connect" to a computer. If you read the data sheet on the page (this thing) [sony.co.jp] you'll see that the interface specs include one hsync line, one vsync line, and three lines for each color (RGB.) You just need to generate logic pulses according to the timing charts around page 9 or so. So how do you interface this LCD easily with a PC? You don't, you need to convert the VGA signal to something this display can understand, or even DVI if you're lucky enough to have a card

  • Google search found (Score:3, Informative)

    by jptechnical ( 644454 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:40AM (#7731869) Homepage

    lots of companies that work with kiosk cabinets google for "kiosk cabinet" [google.com].

    Not knowing what your software already looks like, this site [elotouch.com] asks some good questions for a touchscreen application.

  • Enclosure is important! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elemur ( 7613 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:53AM (#7731940)
    I had two kiosks at an outdoor location and the enclosure is *key*! I understand that you are doing it internally, but the enclosure is typically tied to a touchscreen of some sort, and that often will limit your options. Or, atleast provide guidance.

    Our touchscreens required a special driver in windows and then simply behaved as a mouse. We had a real problem with text entry however.. we were using a special kiosk browser with pop-up screen, but people found it very difficult to use. A nice enclosure with an attached keyboard and trackball would have helped things dramatically.

  • I'll start off by saying that I typically don't recommend overly expensive (because I'm a tightwad), but in this case I'll make an exception.

    Allen Bradley uses Elo Touch products [elotouch.com] for thier industrial control touch screen PC's. These things are wonderful IMHO - I didn't want to see the ones I had leave when the project was done, and they had to go be installed on site - I love mine as a nice 21" desktop montitor and touchscreen combo :-) These critters are a bit hefty price wise, but I haven't seen one fail yet in the field (and these are industrial areas - either gritty dirt or greasy type stuff). They are pretty nice displays, but a little more faded color wise than I'd like to normally use for a desktop application like Photoshop. Incredibly durable, lots of different styles, and they have excellent accuracy. I recommended 'em.

    What I DON'T recommend is going with the lowest priced one you find. It will fail. Seriously. Don't be afraid to take your time, and find out what has the longest time between failures -vs- ruggedness (they don't always go together) -vs- the features you need. Anything less than what you need for the application is going to REALLY hurt you later.

    As for programming for one - if it's on Windows, no problem. It's just a one-button mouse. They also have Linux, Mac, etc. drivers - it's just sending ya' mouse coordinates and a mouse click. For most applications, it's ready to roll before you even see the touch screen, it's that simple.

  • Enlarge and Limit (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitalvengeance ( 722523 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:33AM (#7732134)
    I recently wrote a traffic stop statistical program for a sheriff's office that used their laptop touchscreens as the primary mode of input. From that short 2-day project, I learned a few points that I'll pass on now.

    First, make everything larger than you need it to be. I've found that the size of buttons I need on a touchscreen is only about 1/3rd as large as some of my less adept users. (Of course, they are also using these in laptops in often-moving vehicles.)

    Secondly, try to severely limit the items on any given screen. I've found that users tend to be faster visual-scanners when they can just "tap" as they move their eyes, providing too many options on one screen can lead to more false-clicks.

    As far as drivers go - just process the input as a one button mouse.

  • Different types of touchscreens (Score:5, Informative)

    by NickDngr ( 561211 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:57AM (#7732243) Journal
    There are many different types of touchscreen technology. The least expensive and the most common is a resistive touchscreen. These are also the least durable and give the most distortion. You can touch them with just about anything (including a golved hand) and they will work.

    If you want something a little more durable, go with a capacitive touchscreen. These will cost a bit more, but they will be MUCH more durable and will look much better. You have to use a bare finger on them, but for indoor use this is an acceptable tradeoff.

    There are other, less common, more expensive types that you are not likely to come across as well. Do your homework. I work in a casino - we have thousands of touchscreens. Gamblers are brutal, and all touchscreens are a PITA, but I think the capacitive type are your best bet.

    • Re:Different types of touchscreens (Score:5, Interesting)

      by crisco ( 4669 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:36AM (#7732432) Homepage
      3M Dynapro demos their NFI [3m.com] touchscreens with spraypaint, stickers and stuff glued to the panel and it still works. NFI is a variant of capacitive technology and looks like it works well.

      Our product uses resistive from 3M and works well enough, although occasionally someone gouges the screen hard enough to start ripping the resistive layers of plastic out.

    • Re:Different types of touchscreens (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      One thing to note with capacative touch screens, is that the resolution of the pointer is often much lower than resistive. Most touch-screen apps are based around large buttons, so it usually doesn't matter, but if you need to be able to control the pointer down to the nearest couple of pixels then you had better try before you buy.

    • My gym has a fancy touchscreen thingy to track your workouts. [fitlinxx.com] I suspect that they used a capactive touchscreen* because if you get a tiny drop of sweat on the screen, it stops working. I guess they didn't really test their kiosks in actual gyms. Maybe that was intentional so that people would wipe up after themselves.

      (* I don't know what the actual technology is, I just know these screens have this problem)
  • I work at a printing plant (currently the number one company in the world w00t). We use advantech panel computers w/touch screen displays at the back of the press and soon in the color booth. They get abused with ink, oil, and various solvents and after a year still have NO "dead spots" on the screen where it doesnt work. Using your finger the mouse cursor does jump around a bit but i always use the back end of a pen or another plastic tool to move the mouse/icons around.

    http://www.advantech.com/ACG/ [advantech.com]
    • Advantech makes a few lines of touchscreen integrated computers. One of the things Ive seen is the TPC line of industrial grade computers isn't as robust as the PPC line (the one mentioned in the parent post).

      The touchscreens are the same but the intenal componets are not. I've had many TPCs with failed hard drives or bad motherboards.

      FWIW.
  • No matter what technology you choose for the displays, I would suggest having a box of cleaning wipes near the screen - preferably the kind that have Clorox or some other strong antiseptic in them.
    • "No matter what technology you choose for the displays, I would suggest having a box of cleaning wipes near the screen - preferably the kind that have Clorox or some other strong antiseptic in them."

      While a very good point, it's not that good an idea, as this is exactly the over-use of antiseptics that has led to the evolution of resistent bacterial and viral strains. The downside is I don't have a suggestion apart from reviving the old saw of 'washing your hands' when you come into contact with public a
      • Your point about the overuse of antimicrobials like triclosan is correct, but I am not talking about antimicrobials - I am talking about "Nuke'm till they glow, shoot them in the dark, and and let $DEITY sort them out" antiseptics, like sodium hypoclorite, hydrogen peroxide, Lysol, and the like.

        Nothing short of an extremophile will survive those to engender resistance.
        • Nothing short of an extremophile will survive those to engender resistance.

          Biofilms will also survive, but that's due to having an outer layer of bacteria killed by the antiseptic protecting the inner layer, not due to any inherent resistance.
        • "Nothing short of an extremophile will survive those to engender resistance."

          And that, Virginia, is where little extremeophile species come from.
    • I really don't know, but I'd guess that using harsh chemicals like those found in Clorox wipes would be bad for the monitor over long-term use.

      Just a guess, but most manufacturers recommend only *mild* soap and water for such things.

      But, certainly, having some damp cloth/wipes nearby would definitely help.

      Peace & Blessings,
      bmac
      For true peace and happiness : www.mihr.com
      MSG v. 4.0 :-)
    • Clorox is bad for your hands.
  • We use touch screens for one of our applications. They are placed in access points of Nuclear Power Plants. One thing we found when testing this project is that durability is a lot more important than originally spec'ed. We use a company called Touch Controls for our screens. They have a problem in that it takes forever to get a quote, but their technology is hands down the best.

  • Different Technologies, and Companies (Score:3, Informative)

    by michael noah ( 515401 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:18PM (#7735481) Homepage
    A couple of people have mentioned capacitive and resistive touch sceens. There is a better solution than both of these, a technology called Surface Acoustic Wave. It offers a longer life than capacitive, better accuracy than resistive, and IIRC. In fact, capacitive is in general better than resistive on all fronts, but SAW is not only longer lasting, it allows use without skin contact, i.e. by someone wearing gloves.

    The 2 big names in touch are 3M (microtouch), and Elo. The both provide about the same services, and you'd have to have a relationship with them to decide which was better, I think.

    There are new technologies on the horizon that will surpass SAW, but I've yet to get my hands on a demo unit.
  • Whats wrong with a mouse? Touch scrrens are often more trouble than they are worth and often confuse users who are expected to switch between keyboard and mouse. Your post doesn't describe the application so its hard to say what you're priorities are. Touch screens are often expensive, screens get dirty and touch screens loose calibration and stop working. A keyboard with some sort of pointing device or a menu with numbers/letters is often easier for users anyway. Or you could go the ATM route and have

  • Touchscreen (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Depending on the operating system you use, the touch supplier will provide you with the driver to interface your touchscreen. The best solution for you is a capacitive toughtouch solution which has impact resistance for vandalism and can be sealed for moister and water. SAW will not handle that,

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