If you design industrial, medical or other small-to-medium volume non-consumer devices you may well have been presented with the following challenge by your marketing department: “We want the next version of the Widgetmaster Turbo X to do away with a mono display and implement a colour, touch interface instead. Oh, and can you deliver it in a few weeks and at minimum cost?”
And while it’s true that there can be very few modern devices and systems that would not offer improved user experience by using next-generation touch interfaces, upgrading from mono to colour has not always been a straightforward task.
Fortunately that is now changing with new families of off-the-shelf, ‘drop-in’ display platforms, which:
- Support the quick and easy addition of colour and colour touch TFT GUIs
- Don’t require changes to current embedded set-ups
- Allow expansion of embedded functionality without changing the host system
- Are inexpensive
Take the andersDX DX1 series of embedded displays and the company’s ‘Smart Touch’ modules, for example. These platforms comprise carefully selected long-lifetime availability, optically advanced colour TFTs, pre-integrated with different touch options and all necessary driving electronics, backlight drivers and power supplies, to ensure optimal graphics performance. Mechanical and electrical integration overhead has been kept to a minimum through convenient mounting holes and multiple options for interfacing – Smart Touch modules connect to the host via a serial port - to the main application board and DX-1 comes with a complementary GUI software suite for quick design and development of different applications screens.
And, of course, you don’t have to be upgrading an existing design to take advantage of these platforms – they are just as suitable for reducing development time and cost of new product designs.
Download our Embedded Displays Brochure here
Click here to view our whitepaper on 'why embedded GUIs fail and how to make sure your's doesn't'.