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Cheap, Small LED or LCD Touch Sensitive Screens?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the off-the-shelf-or-DIY-project dept.

emf2268 asks: "I'm looking to either purchase or build (I'll do the circuitry myself if I have to) several dozen, small screens for an arcade game that uses a touch interface. Each screen, which should be around 6-10 inches, needn't be extremely advanced in the display department, since 16 colors will do just fine. An LED or LCD would do the job. But each screen also needs to be touch sensitive...it only needs to know if it's been touched, not where it was touched. How, can I build this as cheaply as possible?"

3 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. You can use an LED matrix as both display & se by saccade.com · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It turns out you can use LED arrays as both displays and sensors. People have successfully used them for touch sensor controllers. See this blog for some experiments. The original concept came out of the NYU media lab.

  2. Touch panels are cheap and easy... by Facegarden · · Score: 5, Informative

    Resistive touch panels (not including the screen) are incredibly simple and cheap... They can register position, but if you don't care, you can still use them to see if they've been pressed. Get some palm-pilot touch panels, peel off the overlay on the back for the graffiti section, and you have a nice ~4 inch touch sensor. Buy custom sizes from a place like 3m or digikey, or get old palm pilot touch panels (no screen, just the touch part) for $4 each from http://www.halted.com/ Look up how they work... they basically act as a voltage divider when pressed... a simple comparator circuit is all that you need to register a press, and it's much more elegant than resting the screen on a push switch... -Taylor

    --
    Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
  3. LCD touch by nan0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    earthlcd has been a savior on many a project

    http://store.earthlcd.com/

    if you really just need on/off - do the spring loaded, or piezo, or even IR (www.acroname.com - sharp ir sensors)

    if anyone has any other leads on cheap overstock LCDs... post away!!!