Neonode AirBar turns a regular laptop or PC monitor display into a touchscreen
Welcome to our readers on the iCover Blog Pages ! Monitors with a touch layer on PC or laptop screens are still exotic today. At the same time, many will probably agree that wielding the mouse on a widescreen panel as part of the tiled concept of the Windows 8-10 OS is often at least inconvenient and unproductive. Here and in such cases, the advantages of the sensor, which we habitually and with pleasure use every day in smartphones and tablets, would be very useful.
The Swedish company Neonode offered an original, easy to implement and inexpensive solution that allows turning a regular laptop or PC screen into a full-fledged touch display in a couple of seconds.
Swedish company Neonode in Stockholm on December 16, specializing in the development of interactive sensor systems, presented the Neonode AirBar optical sensor, the operation of which is based on the principles of the patented zForce AIR ™ technology. AirBar is a miniature strip with magnetic properties that can be easily fixed to the bottom of the display frame of a laptop or monitor. After connecting to the USB port, your familiar LCD screen running Windows® or Chrome OS ™ acquires all the touch capabilities.
Almost any touch with any item is supported
AirBar is equipped with a linear light field projector, most likely working in the infrared range. Moreover, the system recognizes the touch of any object crossing its light field. According to the developers, Neonode AirBar practically does not consume system resources and is activated immediately after connection, without the need to install drivers. In terms of sensations and response speed, the working AirBar is quite comparable with the capacitive screen of modern tablets.
The demo video is impressive: the device works smoothly, quickly, stably, Moultitouch is active, gestures and touches of various objects. And indeed, the novelty seems to fit perfectly into the framework of the “it just works” concept.
Externally, AirBar looks very compact and almost merges with the laptop screen frame
According to Rimo Behdasht, senior vice president of business development at Neonode, on one of the company's websites, AirBar projects an invisible stream of light field onto the display surface, which allows you to interact with the OS interface by touch. The Neonode technology in zForce AIR ™ opens up the possibility of using not only a finger, but also any convenient material at hand, since the light field does not care, which causes disturbance in its coverage area, as well as whether you use it on a business trip, at school, in travel. In addition to reacting to a traditional touch, AirBar also offers such useful features as scrolling and zooming, and reaction to user gestures. In this case, no glare and dirt from fingerprints (with contactless exposure).
Neonode Optical Sensing Technology with zForce ™consists of a set of detectors and light emitters, an optical fiber with lenses and an IC touch controller connected to the host. The technology does not impose any special requirements on the display design and its coating, providing 100% optical transparency of the window and a consistently high image quality without any artificially created glare. The authors of the novelty emphasize that the features of optical sensing technology provide a number of significant advantages compared to existing touch and non-contact methods, such as cameras, infrared, resistive and capacitive screens. The simplicity of the principle used in Neonode in zForce ™ significantly reduces the resource consumption and cost of the final solution, while expanding the scope of possibilities for its use in mobile phones, gadgets of wearable technologies, PCs, laptops,
Since the principles of technology are based on optical effects, the efficiency of the AirBar is virtually independent of electrical noise. At the same time, the IC NN1002 unique touch controller, using complex filtering systems at the hardware level, combined with filtering carried out by optical and software methods, allows to obtain a system that is completely protected from the effects of interference from surrounding light sources. Moreover, the temperature range at which the system demonstrates stable operating parameters is limited by thresholds of -40 ° C to + 85 ° C.
It is important that the technology works on any type of display and with the surfaces of displays of any shape, including concave surfaces. For the convenience of the user and to avoid screen contamination, in many cases the non-contact “touch in air” method is useful. In the future, it is possible to use another valuable advantage of the Neonode AirBar - the ability to work properly when immersed in water, which is completely unacceptable for a capacitive sensor.
The official announcement of the Neonode AirBar will be held at the CES 2016 (Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, January 6-8, 2016. And you can order Neonode AirBar for a laptop with a 15.6 ”screen on the manufacturer’s website. Preorder price is $ 49.
Dear readers, we are always happy to meet and wait for you on the pages of our blog. We are ready to continue to share with you the latest news, review articles and other publications and will try to do our best to make the time spent with us useful for you. And, of course, do not forget to subscribe to our columns . Our other articles and events
The Swedish company Neonode offered an original, easy to implement and inexpensive solution that allows turning a regular laptop or PC screen into a full-fledged touch display in a couple of seconds.
Swedish company Neonode in Stockholm on December 16, specializing in the development of interactive sensor systems, presented the Neonode AirBar optical sensor, the operation of which is based on the principles of the patented zForce AIR ™ technology. AirBar is a miniature strip with magnetic properties that can be easily fixed to the bottom of the display frame of a laptop or monitor. After connecting to the USB port, your familiar LCD screen running Windows® or Chrome OS ™ acquires all the touch capabilities.
Almost any touch with any item is supported
AirBar is equipped with a linear light field projector, most likely working in the infrared range. Moreover, the system recognizes the touch of any object crossing its light field. According to the developers, Neonode AirBar practically does not consume system resources and is activated immediately after connection, without the need to install drivers. In terms of sensations and response speed, the working AirBar is quite comparable with the capacitive screen of modern tablets.
The demo video is impressive: the device works smoothly, quickly, stably, Moultitouch is active, gestures and touches of various objects. And indeed, the novelty seems to fit perfectly into the framework of the “it just works” concept.
Externally, AirBar looks very compact and almost merges with the laptop screen frame
According to Rimo Behdasht, senior vice president of business development at Neonode, on one of the company's websites, AirBar projects an invisible stream of light field onto the display surface, which allows you to interact with the OS interface by touch. The Neonode technology in zForce AIR ™ opens up the possibility of using not only a finger, but also any convenient material at hand, since the light field does not care, which causes disturbance in its coverage area, as well as whether you use it on a business trip, at school, in travel. In addition to reacting to a traditional touch, AirBar also offers such useful features as scrolling and zooming, and reaction to user gestures. In this case, no glare and dirt from fingerprints (with contactless exposure).
A Little About zForce® Technology
Neonode Optical Sensing Technology with zForce ™consists of a set of detectors and light emitters, an optical fiber with lenses and an IC touch controller connected to the host. The technology does not impose any special requirements on the display design and its coating, providing 100% optical transparency of the window and a consistently high image quality without any artificially created glare. The authors of the novelty emphasize that the features of optical sensing technology provide a number of significant advantages compared to existing touch and non-contact methods, such as cameras, infrared, resistive and capacitive screens. The simplicity of the principle used in Neonode in zForce ™ significantly reduces the resource consumption and cost of the final solution, while expanding the scope of possibilities for its use in mobile phones, gadgets of wearable technologies, PCs, laptops,
Since the principles of technology are based on optical effects, the efficiency of the AirBar is virtually independent of electrical noise. At the same time, the IC NN1002 unique touch controller, using complex filtering systems at the hardware level, combined with filtering carried out by optical and software methods, allows to obtain a system that is completely protected from the effects of interference from surrounding light sources. Moreover, the temperature range at which the system demonstrates stable operating parameters is limited by thresholds of -40 ° C to + 85 ° C.
It is important that the technology works on any type of display and with the surfaces of displays of any shape, including concave surfaces. For the convenience of the user and to avoid screen contamination, in many cases the non-contact “touch in air” method is useful. In the future, it is possible to use another valuable advantage of the Neonode AirBar - the ability to work properly when immersed in water, which is completely unacceptable for a capacitive sensor.
The official announcement of the Neonode AirBar will be held at the CES 2016 (Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, January 6-8, 2016. And you can order Neonode AirBar for a laptop with a 15.6 ”screen on the manufacturer’s website. Preorder price is $ 49.
Dear readers, we are always happy to meet and wait for you on the pages of our blog. We are ready to continue to share with you the latest news, review articles and other publications and will try to do our best to make the time spent with us useful for you. And, of course, do not forget to subscribe to our columns . Our other articles and events