Alterix has developed an inexpensive electronics solution for large projected capacitive touch screens from 21" to 105" diagonally. Their solution uses off-the-shelf microcontrollers and discrete components to provide multi-touch sensing at update rates up to 200Hz for screens up to 55" and 100Hz for 105" screens, with palm rejection. This allows large displays to replace interactive whiteboards at a lower cost. Alterix has filed several patents on their hardware and algorithm designs and seeks partners for evaluation, joint development, and mass production of touch displays.

1. 1© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Dr. Victor Zhitomirsky
Achieving the dream of an enjoyable
Big Screen Multi-Touch Experience

2. 2© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Why Alterix
Our development team has experience in developing
challenging sensing solutions using Cortex microcontrollers
Alterix activities stems out from experience of working for a decade
in the technology consultancy cluster based in Cambridge, UK
ARM Cortex microcontrollers offer multiple timers which can be
synchronized together to create a complex state machine. This state
machine is used to control the scanning of the touch sensor grid
and the accumulation of the raw data
We have used a similar approach to develop sensing electronics:
• STM32F303 part was used to develop electronics for absolute rotary
sensor with a resolution of 0.002 degree and update rate of 8µs
• STM32F373 part was used to develop electronics for absolute linear
sensor with a resolution of 1µm and update rate of 32µs
• These designs are licensed to two industrial sensor companies

3. 3© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Our long term goal
There is currently an established worldwide market worth
more than $2 billion per annum for interactive whiteboards
Being exposed to tablet PCs, customers are expecting the new
generation of multi-touch interactive whiteboard products
Scaling up the digitizer size is not straightforward - technical
certification requirements are challenging even at 27” diagonal size
Industry commentators agree that, with the falling cost of TV panels,
whiteboards will routinely become based on them
However at present there are no ideal solutions to the challenge of
making large TV panels touch sensitive
The search is now on for a new touch sensing electronics capable
of working effectively with large panels bigger than 70”

4. 4© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Our medium term market
34” ultra-wide interactive monitors, 55”, 65”, and 70”
interactive TV displays are all ready for mass production
Touch panels based on metal-mesh with up to 55” diagonal size are
manufactured by companies like Toppan, iVTouch, Cima NanoTech,
3M, etc
Metal-mesh touch panels with 65”- 70” diagonal size are made by
Sharp, Panasonic, Bison Optronics, MiraeTNS, and BOE Technology
65” diagonal size 4K TV panels are already affordable – their retail
price is reduced to $1,500; 70” diagonal size 4K TV panels are
retailed below $2,000 – cheaper than interactive whiteboards
Interactive 65”- 70” diagonal size TVs have good enough size for
replacing interactive whiteboards and for providing products such
as gaming tables in casinos, interactive displays for meeting rooms
and can be used for digital signage, vending, and advertising

5. 5© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Disruptive changes
The market is moving
to larger interactive
display sizes
Alterix is offering to transfer
affordable electronic solution
for large touch panels to
interactive displays
manufacturers

6. 6© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Our approach
Alterix has developed disruptive technology solution
addressing unmet needs of the market
Our technology relies on similar physics to the touch digitizers
used in iPad and other tablet computers but provides a
hundredfold improvement in the measurement speed
Our solution is capable of achieving 8,000,000 measurements per
second for a sensing grid and to provide signal to noise ratio
required for working with a small diameter tip stylus
This allows the development of multi-touch digitizers with diagonal
sizes from 21” up to 105” using a single platform technology
Our design is based on readily available off- the-shelf electronics
resulting in a low overall BOM ranging from $15 (21”) to $50 (105”)
and no minimum order size

7. 7© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Achievable specification
Alterix has implemented or exceeded technical
requirements for Windows 8 certification
Supported number of measurement channels - from 130 to 600;
preferred separation between tracks (sensor pitch) is 5.7mm
Update rate gradually falls from 200Hz at the diagonal sizes below
55” to 100Hz at 105” diagonal size
The maximum number of simultaneously reported touches is
15 for 200Hz update rate and 40 at 100Hz update rate
Each touch position is reported together with its accurately
estimated size – thus separating stylus input from the finger input
Latency for reporting the new touch event is equal to 15 ms;
dynamic latency of the established touch position is equal to 5 ms

8. 8© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Touch panel details
Large touch panels must be manufactured
using ITO alternatives
Resistance of the tracks can be as high as 50 Ω/□ for displays with
the 21”diagonal size, but needs to be reduced below 4 Ω/□ for
displays with 84” diagonal size
Electronics is wired using a number of ZIF connectors used with
the flexible flat cables integrated with a touch panel
A longer PCB with a controller – with distributed electronics and
ZIF connectors - can be used along the longer side of the touch
panel to reduce the width of the bezel
Touch panel must be surrounded with a grounded metallic frame

9. 9© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
De-bugging process
Raw data can be provided to the PC via USB and are processed
using identical code to the one run by the embedded software
Individual measurements are combined to build a surface map of
the capacitive coupling to the grounded objects. This map
translates into a video stream of 2D image of conductive objects
Small green circles are used to visualise touch events which would
have been reported for the current raw data by the electronics
The touch position reported to the PC for the stationary touch is
not changing if the noise level is staying below 0.5mm
The speed of the object is evaluated and is used for tracing the
fast moving objects – touch ID reported to the PC remains the
same for touch objects moving at a speed of up to 4 m/s

10. 10© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Our approach to reject large objects
Users can rest their hand or arm on the surface of the screen,
thus eliminating the main cause of ‘Gorilla-arm’ syndrome
Extended use of multi-touch interfaces without the user being able
to rest their arm is referred to as "gorilla arm." It can result in
fatigue, and even repetitive stress injury when routinely used in a
work setting
By rejecting the touches initiated by large objects, our electronics
enables users to draw with a stylus or type using a virtual keyboard
while resting their hand or arm on the surface of the screen
Two minute demo video of our image processing system is available
on YouTube at http://youtu.be/PzQKUn3A2SE

11. 11© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Examples
more examples at
http://youtu.be/PzQKUn3A2SE

12. 12© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Response from the subject-matter experts
“Alterix has clearly designed a very elegant system that
scales well to large sensors and is well suited for
discrete implementations”
CTO, major supplier of multi-touch ASIC products
San Jose, CA
Handwriting with a stylus – the green circle corresponds to the tip of the stylus.
The side of the hand is resting on the screen

13. 13© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Competition
During last year a number of companies has released
electronics for large scale multi-touch displays
Most suppliers are using dedicated ASICs for detection/excitation blocks
However their touch performance is not yet satisfactory
Alterix 105” ready for integration
Silicon Integrated Systems 85” doesn't provide palm rejection
eGalax EMPIA 70” doesn't provide palm rejection
ILITEK Multi-Touch 65” doesn't provide palm rejection
Sharp 70” doesn't provide palm rejection
Advanced Silicon 70” pre-production stage

14. 14© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Our business model
Alterix is offering to build relationships with our clients:
• We provide manufacturing PCBA build documentation for application
specific discrete electronics
• Our clients mass manufacture this electronics
The object code and the electronics build documentation must be
modified for each new geometry of the interactive display product
• This is achieved by the Alterix R&D engineering team
The microcontroller with the locked application specific embedded
software is our “ASIC” product
• Such microcontrollers work only together with our discrete electronics
and only with the specific touch panel geometry
Alterix will supply microcontrollers with the software code
locked from copying or any further modification

15. 15© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Integrated on-cell/in-cell design
Our electronics has built-in blanked signal free running at 500 kHz and
used by our algorithm for complete decoupling of the detection
electronics from the switching events in the scanning matrix at the
front-end
By synchronising the clock base for the timers in the microcontroller
with the external drive, it is possible to decouple from the LCD noise
This allows to consider our electronics for the most challenging
applications like hybrid in-cell touch sensors
External display driver IC synchronisation helps
neutralize noise from the LCD

16. 16© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Is it better to have an ASIC?
Our discrete electronics approach eases pilot production and enables a
rapid increase in manufacturing volumes;
All our discrete ICs are manufactured by Texas Instruments
• Texas Instruments is our preferred suppliers due to their history of
negotiating a substantial discount with large volume customers
• As a first step, multiple ICs can be manufactured on a single silicon by
Texas Instruments
In large volumes the state machine can be implemented within CPLD
with the raw data processing implemented in the graphic core of the
Intel CPU or in the NVIDIA ARM CPU using DirectTouch architecture
ASIC module with 8-bit ADC can be used to provide data to CPU via SPI
ASIC is appropriate only once the
manufacturing volumes have matured

17. 17© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Our IP position
We have filed a family of patents covering :
• hardware design for achieving the best possible signal to noise ratio for the
measurements with the projective capacitive sensor grid sensors
• arrangement for the fast digital scanning system which can be realized
using generic ARM Cortex microcontroller
• software algorithms for the digital filtering of the raw data for improving
signal to noise ratio
Patents are taken to US, Europe, and China. Five patents are already
granted in UK
Algorithm for rejecting large objects will remain as our know-how
Alterix has developed a patent pending technology
for fast and inexpensive electronics for interactive displays

18. 18© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Next steps
Our approach includes three stages:
Evaluation phase
Main goal is to confirm the technical performance for the new product
Joint development phase
Main goal is to confirm the capability for mass manufacturing - this also
includes delivery of the functional test protocol for electronics build
Manufacturing phase
Main goal is to scale up the mass production of the touch panels
Alterix has developed a standard approach for
introducing new products to the market

19. 19© 2015 www.alterix.co.uk
Dr. Victor Zhitomirsky
Managing Director
victor.zh@alterix.co.uk
Phone: +44 (1223) 560996
Mobile: +44 (7758) 552585
Contact Us
Alterix has developed inexpensive electronics
solution for projected capacitive touch screens
with diagonal sizes from 21” up to 105”