Baanto’s Touch Tech Gets Faster, Snappier, Easier

February 1, 2014 by Dave Haynes

baanto

I’m in over my head almost immediately when it comes to assessing the tech and the value of touchscreen technology, but the simpleton thing I really do know is that many of the large format touchscreens and overlays I’ve tried in the marketplace are buggy, slow to respond and don’t behave much like what consumers expect, having used smartphones and tablets everyday.

So this new tech from Toronto’s Baanto – to be demo’d the next two weeks at ISE and then DSE – looks interesting.

The production release of Baanto’s LightSpeed touchscreen products, says a release, “dramatically increase the performance of all Baanto large format touchscreens, increase the breadth of Baanto touchscreen solutions, and implement additional features such as parallax correction to the Baanto Dashboard.”

Damned if I know what that last bit means.

These new products and technology can be evaluated at ISE in Amsterdam (Hall 8, Stand F265) from February 4th through the 6th and at DSE in Las Vegas (Booth 329) from February 12th through the 13th.

Releasing to production now, the ShadowSense products now support multiple configurations for 32″, 42″, 46″, 55″, 65″, 70″, 85″, 90″, and 95″ TFT panels. The new family members significantly extend the breadth of coverage for standard TFT LCD sizes currently available in the market and accommodate a broader range of user requirements. Reacting to market demand, one class of products is slightly oversized to support the Windows 8 “zero pixel” border area. Slightly smaller versions of the touch frames in the same size class are targeted at applications using earlier versions of Windows as well as Linux, Android, and Mac operating systems.

The highlighted bits:

 “Our latest generation of firmware provides new features and just incredible performance,” says CTO Av Utukuri. “Baanto large format products using the LightSpeed.x release of firmware can now track touch objects at rates exceeding 10 feet per second. This level of performance makes our products a stellar solution for interactive displays where rapid finger, pen, and stylus movements are common. For example, the gaming, education, corporate, architecture, and design engineering markets all require high speed and accurate tracking of multiple and simultaneous touch objects. Equally important, the user perception of performance is not based on the touch capabilities, but on how the application reacts. Baanto continues to offer one of the few large format multi-touch products that don’t require drivers or touch detection applications running on the host CPU. This means that complex applications won’t be bogged down by touch processing and it also allows the use of thin clients, media servers, and low power CPU’s without compromising the application performance.”

The company just closed C round funding, led by Difference Capital.  “The additional growth capital will allow us to accelerate our product and technology development efforts,” says Joe Kotas, Baanto President, “as well as increasing our resources in sales, marketing, and customer support around the world to better service our growing and diverse customer base. The expansion of our product line combined with the performance of the ShadowSense “LightSpeed” technology positions Baanto as a premier supplier for applications requiring high performance, robust ambient light immunity, and cost effective touch solutions.”

Again, not an area of strength for me. But my guess is the responsiveness, light immunity and particularly the ability to use this tech without drivers or other installed code are all very attractive enhancements.

 

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