Touch Screens and Thin Clients

The Touch Screen has become the standard input device in manufacturing facilities all around the world. The interface is intuitive, easier to control, and results in a much cleaner installation than the computer mouse.

To that end ACP has made a commitment to support virtually every known model of touch screen on each and every Thin Client. Our work has been so successful that it is rare that we run into a model that we don't have in our database.

One of the more interesting enhancements we have just made to our touch screen support allows a single Thin Client with a single video output to receive input from two different screens. While not encountered often outside manufacturing, this option supports an installation when a single video signal is split onto two different touch screen monitors. The same image is presented on both screens, and now using our enhanced touch screen support both screens can be used for input as well.

For instance, a receiving system in a warehouse could have a display up in the warehouse and another one down near the loading dock. Or a process monitoring system for a blown film line could have a display near the extruder and another one up on the collapsing frame. An operator could control the process from either location with the same screens.

But what about calibration?

Glad you asked!

Think for a minute how calibration is done on any other Thin Client. First, the operator runs the touch screen calibration program provided with the touch screen software.

This program must be run from a local desktop (Standard Windows OS, CE, Embedded XP). It cannot be run from a terminal services session. This means you must somehow log in to a local desktop to calibrate the touch screen by rebooting or logging out of your session. Because it is so inconvenient it is not done frequently enough, and operators end up learning to just touch off to the side.

ACP presents the operator with choices. Five, to be exact:

(1) Start the calibration from the ThinManager interface

(2) Use ACP's "TermMon" ActiveX Control

(3) Launch ACP's touch screen calibration program from within the terminal services session

(4) Use a hot key from the keyboard

(5) Touch the screen for 10 consecutive seconds

Any of these calibration initiation events will put up a simple calibration screen on the client. The operator then just has to touch a few points and the deed is done, all without interrupting the process running on the server. In fact, ACP has customers who have this task scheduled to start once a day just to ensure that the calibration is always "spot on."

For more information on ACP and Thin Client management software, please visit our web site at http://www.thinmanager.com

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