Wireless PCAP Technology: efficiency comes cable free

By Stefano Rosato | 28 July 2023
Cables. We expect, like us, you have a love/hate relationship with them. On the one hand, for most applications when a TFT is connected to a touch, the complete Stack is connected over a short cable to a board. And that works just fine. After all, for this kind of application, a wireless PCAP makes no sense.

But consider another application. Like the whiteboard in the picture, where we want what we write to be instantly transmitted to our PCs. How can we make that happen?

Display Whiteboard

A white board with integrated touch

In collaboration with SIS we have integrated a mesh PCAP behind the plastic cover of the white board and developed a special controller that can drive this plastic mesh stack.

The biggest challenge was connecting the touch to the PC. There can be no defined distance between the White Board and the PC, so it is difficult use a USB cable.

For this reason, together we developed a wireless solution to the touch controller that works over 2.4Ghz RF. In this way the whiteboard and PC can communicate over a distance of several meters – and even through walls!

In the Video you’ll see that when we write on the whiteboard with a standard blue marker, the text appears on the PC.

When we clean the whiteboard with a standard eraser, this too will be recognized by the touch as a palm suppression. The software on the PC will recognize this and delete accordingly.

So, basically, what happens on the whiteboard also happens on the PC.

It’s clearly a great, low cost, way to bring extra efficiency into meetings, with all the notes taken being transmitted to everyone’s PCs wirelessly. All that’s needed is a RF 2.4GHz dongle that can receive the data transmitted by our touch. And, of course, it’s a solution that certainly not limited to interactive whiteboards – we are able to implement this Radio Frequency Controller in every touch-based application.

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About Author

Stefano Rosato - Director, Technical Touch Technology at Avnet

Stefano Rosato is director of technical touch technology in the Display Solutions team at Avnet. Stefano helps customers solve touch challenges and supports customers through the whole design-in phase for touchscreen integration. With deep knowledge about PCAP technology, along with its design-in rules, tuning and pattern designs, Stefano is a leading expert in the touchscreen industry.Read More

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