Touchscreen chosen for modular outside broadcast system

Capacitive touchscreens have many advantages in both consumer and industrial MMI/HMI interfaces and are widely used in applications including mobile phones, MP3 players, PDAS, home entertainment, home automation systems and brown and white goods.

Their use in industrial applications has been limited until now due to small screen size, low screen resolution and a lack of visual clarity imposed by the commonly used wire matrix technology. Using its extensive experience to overcome the limitations of this traditional approach, Stadium-IGT has developed capacitive touchscreens in custom sizes up to 19", with a node count up to 256 (16 x 16) and bespoke interfaces to suit host equipment.

The most recent Stadium-IGT development combines, in one thin layer, capacitive switching and multi-colour area-specific backlighting. Traditionally, it has been extremely difficult to combine the two technologies because the electric field from a conventional electro-luminescent light source, which requires high voltage excitation, has interfered with the capacitive operation. Stadium-IGT has overcome this problem through the use of remote LEDs and thin light guides embedded into the capacitive sensing flexible layer. The completed assembly is less than 1mm thick and, by successfully combining these two leading-edge technologies, secret-until-lit areas, colour changes on key operation and colour-coded visual directions can be given to the operator.

This combination of leading-edge technologies led to Snell, a world leader in broadcast technology, to approach Stadium-IGT with a wish-list of features they would like their new Kahuna Maverik modular outside broadcast system.

The Snell Kahuna Maverik is an innovative new modular control surface.  Easily adaptable to multiple events and event types, Maverik can save valuable space within space-restricted outside broadcast vehicles, giving ultimate flexibility and comprehensive control. The product offers ground-breaking new architecture, total customization, crystal clear OLED buttons with user-assignable thumbnails, touchscreen at the M/E level for instant functionality selection, high resolution and intuitive user function buttons for easy effect recognition and the ability to change or add individual panel segments.

Terry Moss, Stadium-IGT Sales Director comments, “Snell required a clean, modern switch surface, with a custom multi-touch touchscreen and RGB backlit capacitive switching for their GUI unit. Stadium-IGT’s innovative and patented thin film backlighting was used for their T-Bar unit. Our design engineers assisted Snell from the outset with material selection, mechanical and electrical design parameters and PCB design.”

Working closely with the engineers at Snell Stadium IGT designed and built a number of prototypes which included light models, prototype touchscreens and ultimately fully functional preproduction units of both the GUI and T-Bar products. Now entering full production Snell has now launched the system and it will debut for the first time during April 2014 at NAB in Las Vegas, the world’s largest media technology show.

Terry Moss continues, “Stadium-IGT is a market leader in the design and manufacture of user interface systems. Our capacitive switching solutions offering tri-colour LED thin film illumination with selective area backlighting are unique. We are also happy to integrate other styles of operator interfaces into our keyboards including joysticks, rollerballs, glide pads, touchscreens and conventional tactile and non-tactile keypads, allowing us to offer our customers very flexible solutions to their control needs.”