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S. Poulin
According to Freescale datasheet, the gesture and rotation detection features ...
Sanjib.Acharya
It was quite surprising to me knowing that resistive touch screen market is ...
Multi-touch added to resistive touchscreens
R Colin Johnson
1/9/2012 12:01 AM EST
PORTLAND, Ore.—As touch-mania swipes across all markets, many applications look to upgrade to multi-touch but can't afford the high price of capacitive touchscreens. Now automobiles, appliances, medical devices, and low-end smartphones can retrofit multi-touch gestures to existing resistive-touchscreen designs, or create inexpensive alternatives to capacitive touchscreen products, by merely upgrading their controller-chips to Freescale Semiconductor Inc.'s new Ready-Play solution. The new Xtrinsic smart controller provides multi-touch gesture recognition for any standard 4- or 5-wire resistive touchscreen plus handles up to four capacitive touchpads.
"As tablets become more popular, the capacitive touchscreen business has been growing by over $200 million [per year, see figure], but the resistive touchscreen market has been growing at almost the same rate [$167 million]," said John Weil, global business manager for industrial MCU solutions at Freescale. "Adding a resistive touchscreen is a quick and inexpensive way to enrich existing and new applications in medical, consumer, automotive and other markets."
Using proprietary algorithms, and some analog hardware tricks, the new Xtrinsic CRTouch chip provides on-chip state-machines that can recognize slides, two-finger pinches for zooming in and out, as well as multi-finger rotations on standard resistive touchscreens. The controller chip also manages up to four capacitive touchpads for realizing keypads, rotary dials and linear sliders.
"We believe that the CRTouchB12 is the industry's first single-chip controller to offer both gesture recognition on standard resistive touchscreens, as well as capacitive touch sensing," said Weil.
Capacitive touchscreens get all the glamour, since they are used on tablets, but markets for both resistive and capacitive touchscreens grew by at least 20 percent in 2011. Source: IHS iSuppli.
Freescale is aiming the new controller chip at human-machine interface applications which eliminate the need for keyboards for all types of applications—from point-of-sale terminals to automotive dashboards to low-cost netbooks and mobile handsets—as well as in applications where users must wear gloves (medical/security/harsh-environments).
As a part of Freescale's Ready Play solutions, the CRTouch chip offers turn-key software integration with both Android and Linux operating systems. The 5-by-5 millimeter 32-pin QFN package also offers configurable screen resolution and optional calibration and pressure detection for stylus input to resistive touchscreens.
Freescale claims to have the world's first controller (center) that recognizes multi-touch gestures on standard resistive screens, as well as manage up to four capacitive-touch pads (right), shown here on a reference design board.
"As tablets become more popular, the capacitive touchscreen business has been growing by over $200 million [per year, see figure], but the resistive touchscreen market has been growing at almost the same rate [$167 million]," said John Weil, global business manager for industrial MCU solutions at Freescale. "Adding a resistive touchscreen is a quick and inexpensive way to enrich existing and new applications in medical, consumer, automotive and other markets."
Using proprietary algorithms, and some analog hardware tricks, the new Xtrinsic CRTouch chip provides on-chip state-machines that can recognize slides, two-finger pinches for zooming in and out, as well as multi-finger rotations on standard resistive touchscreens. The controller chip also manages up to four capacitive touchpads for realizing keypads, rotary dials and linear sliders.
"We believe that the CRTouchB12 is the industry's first single-chip controller to offer both gesture recognition on standard resistive touchscreens, as well as capacitive touch sensing," said Weil.
Capacitive touchscreens get all the glamour, since they are used on tablets, but markets for both resistive and capacitive touchscreens grew by at least 20 percent in 2011. Source: IHS iSuppli.
Freescale is aiming the new controller chip at human-machine interface applications which eliminate the need for keyboards for all types of applications—from point-of-sale terminals to automotive dashboards to low-cost netbooks and mobile handsets—as well as in applications where users must wear gloves (medical/security/harsh-environments).
As a part of Freescale's Ready Play solutions, the CRTouch chip offers turn-key software integration with both Android and Linux operating systems. The 5-by-5 millimeter 32-pin QFN package also offers configurable screen resolution and optional calibration and pressure detection for stylus input to resistive touchscreens.
Freescale claims to have the world's first controller (center) that recognizes multi-touch gestures on standard resistive screens, as well as manage up to four capacitive-touch pads (right), shown here on a reference design board.
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yalanand
1/9/2012 1:00 AM EST
Thanks for the informative article, never knew resistive touchscreen market is growing at same rate as that of capactive touchscreen market. From performance point of view, can resistive touchscreen match capacitive touchscreen in future?
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R_Colin_Johnson
1/10/2012 12:07 PM EST
Then downside of resistive touchscreens, and the reason they will never completely displace capacitive, is that multi-touches are relative.In other words, they can sense that a two-finger pinch was just performed, but not where on the screen.
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pfrulas
1/10/2012 12:35 PM EST
I think the answer is relative to your understanding of "performance". CRTOUCH, as Colin mentions, offers gesture recognition, not full multitouch. On the other hand, Resistive Screens offer several advantages such the possibility to use it with finger, stylus or any other device. :)
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iniewski
1/9/2012 10:26 AM EST
Why capacitive touchscreen is more expensive than resistive? Kris
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R_Colin_Johnson
1/10/2012 12:08 PM EST
Resistive screens are made from cheaper materials--polymer films.
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docdivakar
1/11/2012 7:32 PM EST
Many capactive and resistive touch interfaces use similar material set except that the earlier generations of capactive touch-based devices also had a rare earth metal-based protection layer. How ever, the precious metals usage in the capactive touchscreen industry is dropping. With more alternates to choose from -Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) without rare earth metals protection layer, Active/Passive OLED's, nanowires (resistive), there are many choices now for any given application.
I have an Android phone with AMOLED screen which works quite well when I compose messages.
MP Divakar
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dvandit
1/10/2012 1:10 PM EST
Capacitive has a higher number of interconnects between the touch surface and the controller, (this increases the connector costs and controller package costs due to more pins required).
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SSBOliveira
1/11/2012 1:23 PM EST
I realy like this article. It shows the touchscreen market scenery and bring good News!Cheaper solutions present new features, that's a greath inovation! The big advantage of CRTOUCH is to improve the interface in applications where users must wear gloves.
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Sanjib.Acharya
1/14/2012 1:55 AM EST
It was quite surprising to me knowing that resistive touch screen market is growing almost the same pace at the capacitive touch screen market. Thanks for the data!
The multitouch technology on resistive touch screen is definitely going to make the low-cost segment of the smart phone & tablet market hotter.
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S. Poulin
4/17/2013 2:11 PM EDT
According to Freescale datasheet, the gesture and rotation detection features work only with the 4-wire resistive touch screen and not the 5-wire...
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