Kiosk Specialist Selects Zytronic for Durable, Reliable and Accurate 17-inch Touchscreen Technology.

Zytronic’s ZYTOUCH® touch sensors are behind a new generation of interactive kiosks that use durable, high-visibility 17-inch touchscreens to deliver an enhanced user experience while ensuring reliable and accurate operation with minimum ongoing maintenance. Suitable for a wide range of retail, hospitality and commercial applications, the new GP2 range from kiosk specialist Touch4 includes products for indoor and outdoor use and very harsh operating environments.

Billed as suitable ‘from the boardroom to the shop floor’, kiosks in the Touch4 GP2 family incorporate a 17-inch high visibility screen with maximum resolutions to SXGA (1280 x 1024). Touch accuracy is better than 1mm, while the durable ZYTOUCH-based design ensures resistance to contamination and allows Touch4 to provide safety glass over the screen as standard. Zytronic’s ZYTOUCH, incorporating Projected Capacitive Technology (PCT™), also ensures that Touch4 kiosks can be used with gloved and ungloved fingers – a key feature for outdoor kiosks that will enable them to be used year-round.

ZYTOUCH, which works by projecting the sensing field forward, in front of the sensor array, enables designs that can detect contact when the sensor is located behind a glass or polycarbonate panel up to 20mm thick. This allows the touch sensor array and control circuitry to be positioned entirely inside the enclosure of the Touch4 kiosk. In addition to offering enhanced protection against wear and tear as well as deliberate or accidental damage, ZYTOUCH also allows for easy sealing against the ingress of moisture, dust or other contaminants such as food. High resistance to cleaning materials and harsh solvents is also inherent, and comes at no extra cost.

PCT is based on an array of very fine sensing capacitors embedded behind a surface substrate, resulting in high clarity during daytime or night-time operation, while ‘drift-free’ operation means no electrical recalibration or adjustment is required over time.

Discussing the selection of Zytronic’s PCT sensing, Dave Porter, Touch4’s Sales Director, comments: “We considered a variety of conventional resistive and capacitive touch technologies but only PCT touch sensors allowed us to meet our key criteria relating to visibility, accuracy, reliability and durability. What’s more, by selecting ZYTOUCH from the Zytronic PCT product range, we were able to create a more aesthetically pleasing, bezel-free design in which the touchscreen is flush with the kiosk exterior.”

Touch4 is now ramping up production of its GP2 range, and the kiosk family – which also includes wall-mounted and low-level versions – and is already being used by universities, tourist organisations and shopping centres. Touch4 can supply kiosks in the customer’s colour of choice and with a variety of options including keyboards, printers and card readers.