Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
Personal Computer for Children

in category Other
proposed by PurpleAlien on 8th February 2006 (accepted on 10th February 2006)
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  Touchscreens
posted by PurpleAlien on 7th March 2006


You have no idea how difficult these are to find.

Well, one or two is no problem, but when you need larger quantities eying mass production, things get complicated.

The problem is this: VGA
Most touch screens on the market, as used in Laptops, are LVDS. But there are no standard Graphics cards available with this kind of connector. Not to mention many of the small "Mini-AGP" cards are build for one type of screen in particular.
And even then, getting these mini-agp cards to work in a normal AGP slot is nearly impossible.

The solution to this problem would be to equip the next generation of EFIKA with a mobile onboard graphics chip to drive these kinds of screens. Or maybe provide a mini-AGP connector...

For the prototype we found a solution in the form of a Lilliput screen which can be dismantled. Quite expensive, but seems like the cheapest solution in the market right now. It has a VGA connector, so we can attach it straight to a standard video card.

Since EFIKA is targetted at the mobile market, I hope in the future this problem can be handled in an elegant way so we can shave a big amount of mony off of the production cost.


Johan.
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