Zytronic has launched what it is calling a new generation of multi-touch controllers, which enable ultra-narrow inactive borders and improved compatibility with contactless systems.

In response to the growing demand for narrow screen borders, especially in interactive video walls, the new Zytronic ZXY500 touch controllers allow touch sensors to be designed with substantially reduced non-active borders. For example, a 55” diagonal touch sensor can now be designed with sub 10mm borders. A further advantage of the new ZXY500 controller is its compatibility with contactless technologies increasingly being integrated alongside displays to enable payments, customer tracking and battery charging technologies. RFID, NFC and Qi phone charging all generate wireless signals that can interfere with the operation of conventional touch screens, but the new controller has industry leading signal-to-noise ratios and algorithms that change dynamically to reject electromagnetic interference in the operating environment.

The ZXY500 can support up to 80 simultaneous touches and the implementation of improved palm rejection functionality. It also features increased speed, updating touch co-ordinates in just 1ms at the controller output, reducing touch latency by a third compared to previous generation controllers and improving the user experience. Each channel on the device can be configured via firmware to operate in transmit or receive mode. This feature further enhances performance in applications where touchscreens of unusual aspect ratios are used.

Designed specifically for use with Zytronic touch sensors, the ZXY500 performance and noise immunity works on displays from 5” to around 86” diagonal, using a 40V on-board drive signal coupled with new touch sensing algorithms. Because of its noise immunity, the ZXY500 allows the air gap between the display and the sensor to be decreased, reducing optical parallax and improving the appearance of the display. It can reliably detect touches through over 8mm of overlaying cover glass, even with gloved hands and is unaffected by rain, dirt, oil or ice on the surface of the touch sensor, making it ideal for outdoor and unattended installations.

Despite the high drive signal, the controller and touch sensor together can be powered from a 5V USB port, eliminating the need for a separate power supply. The ZXY500 is offered with USB output as standard, but also has options to add RS232, I2C, SPI and interfaces, to simplify system integration for industrial and medical applications. The smallest controller in the new ZXY500 controller family has been significantly reduced in size to just 61 x 64mm for the 64-channel version. The flexible printed circuits (FPC) connecting the touch sensors to the new controllers have also been reduced to just 120mm in length, further helping to achieve a compact overall touch system design.

The new controllers have been designed to be HID (Human Interface Device) compliant and offer ‘plug-and-play’ operation with current Windows operating systems, and also support the latest Linux and Android versions designed for multi-touch. All settings including calibration data can be stored in non-volatile memory on-board the controller, so that once an initial touchscreen (“golden unit”) has been optimally set up, these settings can be copied directly into firmware and used to configure further interfaces in production without the need to repeat the set-up and calibration process.

Zytronic is releasing a family of three ZXY500 controllers optimised for different sizes of touch interface. The 64-channel ZXY500-U-OFF-64 is recommended for sensors of 5” to 20” diagonal, the 128-channel ZXY500-U-OFF-128 for sensors of 20” to 55” and the 256-channel ZXY500-U-OFF-256 for sizes above 55”.

Here are more detailed specs.