Increasing number of screens panels in various consumer electronics are touchscreenpanels, which has been driven with increasing functionality and sophistication of electronic devices, where operation of touch panels is increasing shifting toward pinch, spread and other intuitive finger gestures. UP to now, the only way to make this happen was through use of more expensive electrostatic capacitance type touchscreens which require certain input devices. Now, in order to give the same type of multi-touch (two-point) capabilities and intuitive gesture control, including pinching, spreading and rotating to resistive-type touchscreen due to their low cost, Rohm has developed industry’s first multi-touch controller for resistive touchscreens. The new high-speed, high-noise immunity, low-voltage resistive touchscreen controllers BU21023 /BU21024 series will turn the conventional 4-wire resistive touchscreen designs into dual-touch touchscreen. The new controller series integrate a dedicated analog circuit and CPU for precise two-point coordinate and gesture detection. In addition to this, a calibration function is also built-in which minimizes the effects of panel variations during production as well as fluctuations in touchscreen device characteristics caused by temperature variations or time-based degradation. Finally, the resistive type touchscreen offer other advantage such as allowing user to operate even while wearing glove, as well operating with finger nails contrary to the more expensive capacitance-type touchscreens.
