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I'm working on a project to apply touch sensitivity to a modified pin display (30x30). The goal is to allow someone to interact with the display through their fingers and ideally touch.

We initially looked at detecting touch through capacitive touch sensing on a pin by pin basis, potentially using several pcb layers which would make contact with and allow us to track changes in the capacitance of each pin and therefore touch events. However, this is 900 pins for a 30x30 display and interference between the traces and maintaining contact with the pins could be a problem so we're looking to see if anyone has a better solution that allows us to make this pin display interactive.

We have also experimented with depth cameras (leapmotion) and the current solution is using a computer vision system to track the fingers and an interaction (ask them to push a button) to know if the fingers are contacting the display or not.

Any other novel approaches or better solutions which allow you to track both finger position and if they're contacting the display, would be very useful.

Below is an example of the type of pin display that we were looking at adding touch sensitivity too. example pin display

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    \$\begingroup\$ Please write a specific question (like where you are getting stuck). This question is too broad as it stands. \$\endgroup\$
    – Voltage Spike ♦
    Commented Jun 7, 2021 at 17:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ Are you looking to detect touch or displacement? \$\endgroup\$
    – Frog
    Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 11:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm looking just for touch, I've deleted my comments about a later part of the project which is related to measuring displacement. \$\endgroup\$
    – aheigins
    Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 14:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ Please write a specific question in your post, it's for the people that will write an answer on the post. \$\endgroup\$
    – Voltage Spike ♦
    Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 16:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ @aheigins but if it's only about touch, how would the camera help? That could only see displacement. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Jun 10, 2021 at 9:09

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You could replicate the Pin array design with some linear array potentiometer by gluing them vertically on a PCB:

enter image description here

enter image description here

https://www.directindustry.com/prod/bourns/product-11910-205199.html https://www.directindustry.com/prod/althen-controls/product-209349-2243873.html

Then simply measure their resistance with a multiplexed system, might be a bit costly and time taking to make, but will be very accurate.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ didn't know you could get linear array potentiometers, not something i think we could implement practically but a good contribution! \$\endgroup\$
    – aheigins
    Commented Jun 14, 2021 at 14:25

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