May 23 2013
Ocular LCD, Inc., a leading supplier of industrial touch panels, today announced the availability of PCAP touch panels specifically designed for outdoor and marine applications.
Crystal Touch, Ocular's premier line of projected capacitive touch panels, provides a robust touch solution with increased optical clarity, durability and scratch resistance. Now Crystal Touch panels can be customized specifically to perform in outdoor and marine applications. These specially designed touch panels are non-birefringent and immune to false touches caused by water spray and droplets.
Marine applications will particularly benefit from the new outdoor touch panel offerings. Water droplets, especially saltwater, can cause false touches on projected capacitive touch panels. False or unintended touches can be problematic, or even dangerous, in certain applications. Leveraging touch panel design expertise and a strong technical relationship with Atmel®, Ocular has a proven design capability that enables touch panels to identify and disregard unintended touches caused by water droplets and spray while still maintaining accurate touch functionality.
Birefringence can also be an issue in certain outdoor applications. Birefringence, also known as the "rainbow effect," occurs most often with polarized sunglasses. Ocular can design and manufacture projected capacitive touch panels that are non-birefringent, allowing excellent optical qualities with polarized sunglasses or cover glass.
"With increased demand for high performance touch applications to be used outdoors, our team has the capability to design a touch solution to overcome the birefringence challenge," said Paul Massey, sr. vice president of marketing and sales at Ocular. "Applications such as outdoor POS and infotainment products are hard to interact with in sunlight. However, we can provide an optically clear touch panel allowing users wearing polarized sunglasses to interact with the display without a rainbow effect interfering with the image."
"We are excited to continue our collaboration with Ocular on large touchscreen displays," said John Kiachian, vice president of touch marketing, Atmel Corporation. "Atmel's maXTouch S series controllers deliver better linearity, increased signal-to-noise ratio and excellent noise immunity for Ocular's PCAP line of touch panels. As a result, users can experience better touch performance and responsiveness for Ocular's large touchscreen displays for outdoor and marine applications."
Crystal Touch panels designed for outdoor applications are now available and demonstrations are being featured this week at SID Display Week in Vancouver. Visit Ocular at booth 1221.