Airtouch and Airscan - the difference....

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Airtouch and Airscan - the difference....

Postby Patrick Verhey » Tue Apr 27, 2010 10:01 am

Hi,

as we do have some confusion regarding Airscan, Airbars, Airtouch here some information about it:

We do talk about an Airscan and an Airtouch. The Airtouch is what some people know as Airbars, but oficially we call it Airtrouch.

The Airtouch is actualla a pair of two infrared LED Bars wich are pointing to each other as a Lightcurtain. They have a 3mm pixel pitch and will give us an information about the position where the curtain is “blocked”. So actually we do get 3 vaues out of them.

No.1: Left position
No.2: Right position
No.3: Distance between right and left position (Delta)

With the Airbars you can only track one dimension. So there is only a left to right, no up and down position. In the end you can do a lot of things with it like scaling, moving, rotating a layer. But they are always limited to one dimension. The setup is pretty easy. You have a controller box wich connects to the Widget Designer via USB. Into that controller box you plug the sender and reciever bar with a DIN cable. On the sender you will find a red and a green LED. As soon as the pair is setup right the LED will go from red to green. Thats all for setup. The rest is node programming in Widget Designer.

A good example of th Airtouch work is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdKCiGN9n70


The Airscan is a bit more complex. It is a infrared laser scanner wich will scan the area in a 180° range. The scannig will only take place in one dimension, a bit like a lightcurtain again. But we do get much more information from the Airscan. We will see two points with an individual ID. Each point will have a x and y position. And we can get the Delta in between these points. So with the Airscan we can do a multitouch as well as a left right and up down position.

The Airscan connects to the Widget Designer with a Network Cable and needs to get an IP Adress in the same range as the Widget Designer. Then you will find a tool in the Widget Designer to configure the Airscan. There you can do a lot of settings, mainly to make a definition of the virtual touch screen size. So the angle and distance of the scanned area can be changed here.

As we do get much more information from the Airscan you can do a lot of things with it in the Widget Designer. Due to that the programming and setup is much more complex. And you need to adjust the Airscan settings on every venue as it depends on the distance and height from the mounted Airscan to your screen.

And here you will find a good example of the Airscan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_qB5jQTrSU

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact me.

Best regards

Patrick
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Re: Airtouch and Airscan - the difference....

Postby Patrick Verhey » Tue Apr 27, 2010 4:36 pm

Hi,

I actually made a little mistake her as we do have different names in our Marketing Material....

So there is a group of so called Airtouch Solutions. This means everything which is controlled without direkt contact.
Right now we do have 3 different Options in the Airtouch Solutions:

1.) Airbars - that´s what I explained up as Airtouch. Right now the name in the Widget Designer is wrong. The input node of the Airbar is called Airtouch. but this will be changed with the next update.

2.) Airscan - see up fo a description...

3.) Trackscan:

this is laser barcode reader. The small device uses a visible laser to read a designated barcode tape. That way it gives you a position of the laser. The laser is connected via Serial Port to you Widget Designer and we read out the position data. This is the most simple Airtouch device we have at the Moment. Very fast and easy setup.

Whenever you are moving things the Trackscan can give you its position. Either tape the barcode tape onto the fixed part and let the laser move along or the other way arund. Best example would be a Screen moving on a trail like you can see on our NAB video:

http://www.coolux.de/root/downloads/mar ... 010web.mov

The slider TV showing the flowers works with the trackscan.

I hope I did not confuse anybody. But it will be very clear as soon as we renamed the node in the Widget Designer.

best regards

Patrick
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Re: Airtouch and Airscan - the difference....

Postby rubendesnoo » Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:29 pm

Hi,

The trackscan sounds new for me, is it possible to track an actor with this technique? What is the maximum range?
Could you also tell me something about the price?

thanks
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rubendesnoo@gmail.com

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Re: Airtouch and Airscan - the difference....

Postby Markus Zeppenfeld » Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:54 pm

Hi Ruben,

i can't tell you anything about prices as you have to contact your nearest dealer for those information.

The trackscan is good for tracking moving objects which move along a specific line where the barcode is fixed. The barcode reader will be placed on the moving object or the other way round.
So this is absolutely no solution to track a person. In this case the other AirTouch Solution or tracking with IR-Cameras would be the better option.

Markus
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