The Raspberry Pi is a small single-board computer originally created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation as an affordable tool for teaching computer science. Due to its low cost, ease of use, and broad community support, the Raspberry Pi is now being used in a variety of diverse settings with users installing them in everything from home automation systems to autonomous aircraft.
In response to customer requests, Hope Industrial is now offering DC versions of our 19″ and 23″ industrial monitors and touch screens. All DC units include a pluggable industrial terminal block and an input range of 9.6 to 36.6 VDC. DC units include an AC-to-DC power supply provided for bench testing. These models are ideal for telecommunications, utilities and transportation applications.
Our industrial touch screens use resistive touch sensors (discussed here), which are well suited for harsh industrial environments. The outer layer of these sensors is made of a polyester sheet that is coated with an acrylic “hard-coat” film for added scratch prevention. As a result, our touch screen sensors have a hard-wearing surface that is suitable for most environments.
Depending on the environment, there are different requirements for user interfaces and how people need to interact. Recognizing this, Elo added a few features to their drivers that provide some advanced functionality to enhance usability for very specific purposes.
More and more often, our industrial touch screen customers are taking advantage of the open source Linux operating system, Ubuntu. Ubuntu has evolved into a versatile, easy-to-configure environment with a large community following and massive support from the company Canonical. We have seen a steady increase in calls from customers leveraging Linux in industrial environments, and in recent years Ubuntu has been leading the charge. In addition to the standard Elo-provided Linux driver, Ubuntu users now have a very simple touch screen driver solution that requires no new software.
In most typical applications, Hope Industrial touch screens are used to be part of a PC-based HMI configuration, performing some type of PC-based control of an industrial process. The programs that generate these automation interfaces are generally designed with a very simple interface: large on-screen buttons allow simple interaction to a busy, often gloved worker. Generally, the user does not interface with the underlying PC operating system. To operate this type of application, the touch screen does no more than simply pass single “clicks” to the computer, which responds as if a mouse button was clicked.
As a rule of thumb, we recommend calibrating your industrial touch screen if the cursor is more than 0.25″ from the exact center of the point of touch. Doing so will increase the accuracy of the touch response and can make it easier to touch objects with pinpoint precision.
Due to their advantages for the industrial market, Hope Industrial Systems’ products have always used resistive touch screen sensors from Elo TouchSystems, which support single-touch recognition. While many of the advanced touch features we have come to love in our smart phones require a “multi-touch” technology (like pinch-to-zoom), the recent release of a new series of drivers from Elo now allows some of these features to work with any Hope Industrial Touch Screen.
There are several factors to consider when an existing panel mount monitor has failed and it is out of warranty. Most users opt to replace the display since many manufacturers will charge more and take longer to repair the monitor when compared to buying new. Much of the reason is due to the declining cost of LCD’s over the past several years. Therefore, it is wise to consider all the factors in total cost of ownership when selecting a monitor for a new project.
An on-screen keyboard (OSK), or “virtual keyboard,” allows the user to send keystrokes to the PC without the use of a physical keyboard. A mouse, touch screen, or other pointing device is used to “type” on the virtual keyboard on the monitor screen. On-screen keyboards are a great solution when an area rarely needs a keyboard or a physical keyboard is not accessible.