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Thin Film Transforms Any Surface Into Touchscreen
kkleiner writes "Open up a cardboard tube, roll out a transparent film just millimeters thick, apply it on a flat object and *tada* you've got an interactive touch surface. Cambridge-based Visual Planet just launched its new massive-sized multitouch thin film drivers so you can create touchscreens from 30 to 167 inches in size! Their touchfoil is a transparent nanowire embedded polymer capable of sensing the touch of a finger, or even pressure from wind and translating that to a computer interface. It works on glass, wood, and other non-conductive surfaces."
I am so sick of that thin film touchscreen on glass (or other non conductive material) technology we have now
don't you think that's rather thick?
30 to 167 inches. I guess it means like the dash of your car.
I hope they release solid drivers for the stuff too eh eh
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You're probably okay if you roll it more like a toric prism with sufficiently large inner radius, rather than trying to approximate a cylinder.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Put it on women's bras for the ultimate "touchscreen interface".
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Oh, no! Gone with the wind!
Fandroids hate facts.
If this is reasonably affordable I'll stop looking for a development machine with a touch interface and just buy this for my hdtv.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Their touchfoil is a transparent nanowire embedded polymer
You what? Sounds like someone went a bit OTT with the copy and pasting of big words.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
FYI, the interesting topography is supposed to be on the other side.
Also, you can't give a good massage with just light touching with your fingertips.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
When can we use that as a skin for robotic humanoids?
You cannot transform anything into a touchscreen, if it's not a screen!
You insensitive clod!!!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Someone's going to come along and complain "ugh, resistive? If it's not capacitive it's crap!" any time now...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Call me back when you can roll it out on a non-flat girl's back, play a video game for a half hour or an hour, and have her believe you just gave her a massage...
If it'll fit a 167 inch widescreen I'm sure it'll fit your girlfriend too... :)
- Sorry, but you had that one coming
Um, last I checked a millimeter is pretty small. I can roll up all sorts of things to a reasonably thin degree which are much thicker than that(including one of those schnazzy silicone gel keyboard things).
It's a transparent flexible touch surface...and you're complaining because it's as thick as card stock?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
It's the first step towards being able to provide them as cheap prices.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Porn will never be the same!
Touch me here.
Depends on the game, and the girl.
which is totally what she said
They were great out on the shop floor. Some of the mechanics were in the habit of using (pointy, sharp) tools to tap touch screens. So anything that could be peeled off and replaced without having to scrap an entire CRT was great. Yeah, CRT. Get over it, kid. And get off my lawn!
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm just a simple rural engineer, but round these parts we tend to use "thin" to imply something of negligible thickness, not several milla-meters like you fancy city folk.
It will be obscenely expensive...
I have been trying to get something in the reasonable price range to make a 42" touchscreen for a while now. all of it is in anal raping price ranges.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This looks like a great component for lots of hobby projects if it is cheap enough for the purpose. If I could get a single touch that I could make an Arduino interface for at less than $30 I can think of a dozen one-of projects right now. Great science / maker faire signs, wall art, board games, etc.. At $300 they won't sell many. Anyone know the price?
Um, last I checked a millimeter is pretty small. I can roll up all sorts of things to a reasonably thin degree which are much thicker than that(including one of those schnazzy silicone gel keyboard things).
It's a transparent flexible touch surface...and you're complaining because it's as thick as card stock?
Even 0.5mm overhead projector film is pretty hard stuff, silicon gel is very low density compared to plastic films as is card. I would expect a rolled diameter to be around 25-30cm which is fine for the 167", but a bit much for the small 30" versions.
sounds like it would make great robot skin
Fortunately.. pretty much any physical object is a screen. Some are better at it than others, to be sure.
Without some sort of screen/display underneath, how will you know where the 'buttons'/areas are that you want to touch? Unless those buttons/controls are static and constant, in which case physical buttons/switches are probably a better solution.
And just how transparent is this film? I'd love nothing more than to turn my 42" plasma panel in my living room into a touch panel (just for coolness factor if nothing else) but will I still be able to enjoy watching movies with this film stuck to my TV? Unless they can make this thing completely transparent, its not actually as useful as it might first seem.
It annoys me that people think HDTV is good. In fact as far as DPI resolution goes, they're pretty much in the suckage range. My 5-6 year old Dell laptop has a 1920x1200 resolution 17" monitor.
... and btw: How do you sit two TVs next to each other. Really, what developer only uses one monitor nowadays?
This appears to simply be an input device that is rolled out over an existing screen. Kind of neat, but not exactly worldchanging, and quite far from "transforming ANY surface into a touchscreen device". It might be able to record inputs, but the user would get no feedback without a screen or something like that.
If this was a DISPLAY that thin, then this would be groundbreaking.
It might be thin or thick or whatever you want but it ain't a 'thin film'
"A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer (monolayer) to several micrometers in thickness. "
WP
Now what's really good about my hdtv is that I already own it. Is dpi everything? No, i have an n900 woth a 3.5" display at 800x600, is that going to be iseful for development?
What annoys me are people who can't read then go on rants and just assume people have money to spend, did you miss that part as well? It's seems the only thing you saw was hdtv and then you just mentally vomitted.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
N900's 800x480, actually...
Thyat being said, I *do* use it for development, at least tweaking bits of code on the fly with VIM.
But I, for one, would *love* a 200-dpi(N900 is ~230, regular monitor ~100), 20' or so monitor, because it would mean you could use anti-alised fonts and such without it looking blurry and odd. It'd also reduce the need for AA in games, though the total number of rendered pixels would make up for that.
Posted from my N900. :P
what i would relove are lisp bindings for android on my tablet.I haven't been able to get anything done since my laptop died.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Yeah that is what they said with holographic discs and I still haven't seen anyone offer one of those at anything less than truly insane prices. just because you can build something for X doesn't mean you'll be able to build something for Y, sometimes things just don't scale. I bet being nanowire it is a royal PITA to deal with and automation when it comes to wires that tiny probably won't be easy.
Remember they thought the same would happen with core memory too, but by the time they found a way to produce it completely by automation it was obsolete. So while I wish them nothing but luck, as I wouldn't mind a cheap touchscreen for my little netbook, I wouldn't hold my breath.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I was thinking something more like this,
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hN7X5gUktas/TARzweGSccI/AAAAAAAABpc/WVUmn6QuQwE/s1600/ControllerT-Shirt.jpg
Apply to large square of plastic.
Add small micro-controller, a couple of switches, and some minor programming.
Sell as "DanceDance DoorLock".
Profit!!!
I saw something similar demonstrated at CeBit in 2008. It was made by a Chinese company, and they applied it to a bunch of HDTVs on the scene, and let us operated it minutes after applying it (using Vista's tablet features).
Perhaps they didn't use nanotechnology, but it worked fine, so who cares what the underlying tech is?
And it was certainly not "milimeters" thick. More like 1/4 of a milimeter.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Now that Microsoft is trying to turn PCs into smart phones, everyone's going to need this to retrofit their monitors to make the UI usable, since it's completely unusable with a mouse and KB.
I wonder how can you display, say, your favorite holiday pictures on a cardboard box and then have it the touch stuff to zoom that in and out ... ... the real glassy ones I mean.
Or how can you do the same on a window
No, you can only transform screens (in the sense of "device to display pictures and text") into touchscreens.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Does this work on any surface? I guess it would have to be a solid based surface , not a projector screen where you can actually foucs in and out the image, and change the x and y position by doing so?
Obviously it's a virtual massage-based game.
Easily prevented via some hardware and software. Don't use a separate telephone-style keypad for the PIN entry - display it on the touchscreen. Randomly scramble the digits in the keypad before each digit is entered and cover the screen with a privacy film so that it has a relatively small viewing angle.
Those who touch the screen and leave fingerprints all over it, and those of us who break those people's fingers.
mark "that's why there are keyboards!"
and they say romance is dead.
Well, it's a two-step process, and here they are only describing step 2.
Other folks are indeed working on step 1, though.
Neat, indeed!
There's also step no.3 to have anything transmitting on GSM/3G and step no.4 to make anything an iPhone.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.