Touchscreen

My idea was born by viewing demonstrations of Microsofts Surface at Youtube. So one Component of my Ramvik Pinball Table should be a touchscreen (if it is affordable and possible).

As i dont want to cut the glass of the table in pieces and a wanted to have a cleanable surface, the touchscreen should be “under glass”. So i searched the internet for such a technology and found it after a long search:

Projected capacitive touch screen.

Looking at Wikipedia directly gave me a link to a producer of such touchscreen systems: Visual Planet.

At http://www.visualplanet.biz/products/touch/ they show that their product ViP-Interactive Foil works through windows. Some minutes later i found out that this product is a foil which can be mounted under the glass (in front of the screen) and it does exactly what i was looking for. Multitouch (or at least dual touch) is possible but not implemented yet (should come this year). There are two versions: One with an direct attaced USB-controller and one with a removable one. The accuracy seems OK and the resolution is 4096×4096. Unortunatly they don’t give out a price directly on their website. While searching for some other producers i found a project where the ViP-Interactive Foil in the size of 42 Inch was also used. Unfortunately i could not find out when this project was realized but they had listed the costs of the project. The foil was listed as 4000$. So i was forewarned .

I contacted them via email about the thickness of the glass and a price list and got an answer some hours later.You can configure the thickness of the glass and the air gap between the glass and the foil via the driver. They have a german reseller called Interactive Displays. ViP did not give me a price or a hint where the price would start. So i contacted Interactive Diplays in germany.

One day later i got all informations i needed – a price list

They are selling their interactive foil at 32 Inch 16:9 for 1452.- € (q1 2009) not including tax and p+p. I dont know if this is an all in one price (with software and USB-interface), but now i know the range.: 1750.-  to 2000.- € (including Tax and p+p). That’s OK if you earn money with it, but for my table this would be some kind of price overkill. Although i thought about selling my “home use only” pinball for it, i decided to think about this when the table is ready to play. I could mount the interactive foil under the glass even after the table is ready. For pinball gameplay this would be not better than without the foil. For surfing the web this would be great…

Conclusion:

Touchscreen – Great
Moultitouch – Wait for it (and for the software that can understand these informations)
Price – Wait a little bit (in the hope price will drop in near future)

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