How would you go about selecting a meeting room touch screen among all of the different manufacturers out there? There are over 30 brands on the market (not including “white-labelled” brands). Not exactly slim pickings.
The objective of this whitepaper is to help you choose the best touchscreen to equip your corporate meeting room(s). We’re talking about large size touchscreens, that is, more than 65 inches or 165cm diagonally.
By 2021, , the market will increase ten-fold. In short, video projectors are out; large size touchscreens are in. It’s as simple as that. With that said, rest easy you won’t go wrong in purchasing a touchscreen for your meeting rooms. However, you still need to be careful choosing one that meets your needs. This whitepaper is here to help.
Enjoy your reading. The Kickle Team.
- Projected capacitive technology (PCAP)
- An Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) directly inserted within the screen.
- A “computer-like component” directly integrated in the screen.
- An external mini-computer attached to the back of the screen through a standard panel.
- A chipset directly integrated within the screen.
- Which Screen Size for My Meeting Room?
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“Soon, video projectors will be replaced by wide screen touchscreens in all the meeting rooms!”
The objective of this whitepaper is to help you choose the best touchscreen to equip your corporate meeting room(s). We’re talking about wide screen touchscreens, that is, more than 65 inches or 165cm diagonally—just like the one below:
How would you go about selecting a touchscreen for your meeting rooms among all of the different manufacturers out there? There are over 30 brands on the market (not including “white-labelled” brands). Not exactly slim pickings.
In 2016, 364,000 large size touchscreens were set up in meeting rooms worldwide. By 2021, it is forecasted there will be 3.6 million large size touchscreen displays installed. The market will increase ten-fold. In short, video projectors are out; large size touchscreens are in. It’s as simple as that. With that said, rest easy you won’t go wrong in purchasing a touchscreen for your meeting rooms. However, you still need to be careful choosing one that meets your needs. This document is here to help.
To get started, we are going to give you an overview of the different types of technologies used by touchscreen products today.
After that, we’ll dig into some discussion concerning the market, brands, and warranties.
Next, we’ll help you to define your unique “use case.” Ok, a touchscreen—but what for?
And finally, using our summary matrix, you’ll be able to select your perfect touchscreen.
Stay tuned—there is more whitepaper to come! If you have any enquiries or would like to chat about a related matter, please just let us know and we will do our best to help you!
Enjoy. The Kickle Team.
So, let’s get right into it: the technology! There’s a lot to it, but we’ll keep it simple.
Four main technologies are used for large size touchscreen: infrared, capacitive, Digital Vision Touch (DVT) and InGlass. Each one comes with their own unique set of pros and cons. We won’t even touch on resistive nor surface acoustic technologies—as they offer a very poor user experience in terms of multitouch.
“Infrared is a simple, established, and time-tested technology”.
Infrared is the most common technology used in touchscreens today.
Infrared waves are longer than those of visible light, but shorter than those of radio waves. As a result, Infrared light is a type of light that cannot be seen.
Infrared diodes, spanning the entire width and length of the screen, create a bright, squared beam on the surface. When the user touches the screen, it interrupts this beam at X and Y, which determines the point of contact. Infrared can support up to 32 touch points, depending on the brand.
IR technology comes as an overlay, placed over a frame. If you move your finger to within 3mm (more or less) ) of the screen, the surface will consider its presence as a point of contact even though you did not actually make physical contact with the screen.
This is what we call the “height contact”
The less sensitive the height-contact, the better. As a result, compared to other technologies with zero height-contact, the precision of a IR touchscreen is not as good.
SLW is technology based on IR. IR method is based on the X and Y Axis. This way, the processor can only obtain the coordinates. With SLW, the processor can also describe the shape of an object by using the (extra) light waves across the screen. For example, the screen will give different results when using a finger or a palm touch.
When a finger (or anything) electrically charged approaches a PCAP-based surface, the electric charge of the surface is altered (capacitance). Projected capacitive technology detects a touch by measuring the capacitance at each addressable point on the surface. The change in capacitance is measured and converted into X and Y locations. Projected capacitive technology is a mesh of very thin conductive wires, encapsulated in an adhesive, transparent foil and then placed under glass.
Projected capacitive technology can support single, dual as well as multi-touch capabilities.
“Projected capacitive offers a high-precision interaction with the screen”.
The best part of the whitepaper is yet to come. 😀
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DViT belongs in the category of optical detection technologies (like infrared). It is a digital capture system comprised of hardware and software components, using small digital cameras positioned in the corners of a frame that encloses the screen (contrary to IR screens which use IR diodes). When a user touches the active area of the screen (with his finger, a stylus or any other object), cameras locate the contact point (X, Y position) and then transmit this location to the screen software.
DVIT is able to recognize your finger, your palm or a pen, and offers an excellent touch-sensitivity.
As with IR, and contrary to capacitive screens, there is no “overlay” over the glass. That means DVIT screens are robust, offer a good contrast and a good anti-glare effect.
As DVIT is also a software solution, you will need to install specific drivers in order to connect your device to the touchscreen. DViT does not offer as much precision as capacitive does, however, it does offer better precision than IR.
“DVIT is able to recognize your finger, your palm or a pen, and offers an excellent touch-sensitivity”.
Invisible light waves are emitted into a transparent glass where they are then detected on the opposite side by a detector. When an object touches the surface, it causes a disturbance which is measured and calculated at an X,Y position.
“InGlass technology offers an excellent image clarity as well as a no-brightness effect.”
A touchscreen is still only just a screen. In other words, if not connected to “something,” a touchscreen is pretty much useless. This “something” can be:
A touchscreen that integrates an operating system is what we call an autonomous touchscreen, while a touchscreen that does not integrate an operating system is not autonomous.
Let’s run through some solutions:
In 2010, Intel launched the Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) to standardize the system architecture between displays and media players. OPS has quickly become a standard for creating integrated display solutions. As it is a standard, you can plug an OPS into any touchscreen, or swap an OPS out from one screen to another.
OPS is the most common and time-tested solution, although it is quite expensive.
This solution resembles an OPS solution; however, the form factor is slightly larger. Contrary to an OPS, this is not a standardized solution. That means the hardware will be different from one touchscreen manufacturer to another.
“Computer-like” solutions are cheaper than OPS. Nevertheless, as OPS is becoming more and more mainstream, the cost advantage between a “computer-like” solution and OPS is fading.
This solution is the most flexible and cost-effective solution. However, as the mini-computer is not directly integrated within the screen, you will have to power the screen and the mini-computer by an alternative means. If the touchscreen comes with USB ports, these USB ports will not be connected to the mini-computer (contrary to an OPS or another computer-like integrated solution).
This solution offers low performance at low cost. Most of the time, the chipset runs an Android operating system and comes with basic software (whiteboard, basic wireless display).
Last, but not least, you can simply connect the screen to your computer using the HDMI connection for the audio/video and USB for the touch features.
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Here is our vision of the meeting room market over the next five years.
Until 2016, the touchscreen market existed as a niche market for the corporate segment. Today, it has emerged as a volume-driven market.
In the corporate EMEA market (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), five leading brands control 46% of the market: CTOUCH, Sharp, Smart, Samsung, Sahara. 19% of the market is shared amongst well-known brands like Dell, Viewsonic, LG, etc.
34% of the market is shared amongst “unknown” brands, which are typically “white-labelled” brands (i.e., touchscreens manufactured in China and sold in Europe through a sales-oriented brand label).
We believe that the market will consolidate (as any volume-driven market does) at the benefit of current leaders. We predict that the top 5 leaders will come to share 80% of the market in the next 3 years.
Compared to other corporate markets, the APAC market (Asia and Oceania) has no leading brand — the top 20 brands do not exceed 50% of the market share. Even if well-known brands such as Sharp, Smart, Samsung, Panasonic were in the top 20, none of these would represent a significant portion of APAC sales.
The specificity of this market is due especially to the protectionism measures of local governments. This is what allows local brands to succeed in these markets.
We believe that in the next three years, 4 or 5 brands will dominate just as is currently the case in EMEA market. We predict that the top 5 leaders will include a mix of well-known brands as well as local brands, which are now emerging as thanks to solid technology and an affordable pricing position like Prolight.
Warranties
Default warranties start from 2 years (Samsung) and go to 7 years (CTOUCH). Warranties and extended warranties are an important decision lever.
Note on Surface Hub, Google Jamboard and Cisco Spark Board
As Surface Hub, Google Jamboard and Cisco Spark Board are dedicated touchscreens, we decided not to include these screens into this whitepaper’s discussion.
You’re nearly finished. We hope you’re enjoying this whitepaper!
Don’t forget: it would be our pleasure to help you:
Now that you have gathered all of the essential information from a technical perspective, it’s time to dig into user needs. We can divide meeting rooms into 5 categories: Ideation room, efficiency room, presentation room, training room, or special locations.
The purpose of an ideation room is to generate ideas or solve complex problems collaboratively. This room type can be equipped with ideation software (brainstorming, sticky notes, etc.) and make use of a large size touch surface.
Collaborators may work standing up and meetings may last quite long (several hours or even a full day). Efficient room capacity is 5 to 8 people. If there are more than 8 people, you should consider splitting up participants into several groups / rooms. Meetings last longer here than in other room types.
Ideation software must be able to discern between a pen, a finger, and a palm. The touch-experience must be optimal, and the multi-touch capacity is also important.
Ideation software must be preinstalled and ready to use directly from the screen and, therefore, the touchscreen must offer either an OPS, an integrated PC or an external mini-computer solution. As ideation software can be rather specific, Android touchscreens are not an option. Touch experience and multi-touch capacity are very important.
The purpose of an efficiency room is to make decisions (deciding on a budget for a project, for instance, or updating a project roadmap). In this room type, users need to be able to display their documents via their personal devices, sketch on a whiteboard, annotate their documents, and to do all of this in a very intuitive and simple manner. Participants may also need to make videocalls with other rooms or remote attendees, as well as share their documents with these non-present parties.
These meetings are typically short and efficient (45 minutes max). Attendees work standing up or sitting down. Efficiency rooms may be small or large, with space for 2 to 8 people. If there are more than 8 participants, it would be considered more as a presentation room (see below).
Attendees may be internal or external, bringing their own personal devices with different types of connectors (HDMI, mini-HDMI, USB, nothing, etc.). A wireless display solution is a “must-have” feature for this room type. Having an integrated room-booking feature would be considered as a “nice to have.”
Touch experience is very important while multi-touch capacity is also important.
Kickle is a great example of an efficient meeting room solution, especially if you already use Skype for Business as a unified communication solution. Kickle is offered as a mini-computer or directly integrated into certain touchscreens. Want to know more? check this out!
A presentation room is a room where a presenter conducts a speech or presentation before an audience of attendees. Compared to an efficiency room or an ideation room, presentation meetings are not interactive. The presenter only needs to display their device, annotate using the touchscreen, and eventually sketch something on the whiteboard—all in a very intuitive and simple manner.
Room capacity ranges from 8 to 40 people. For efficiency rooms, a wireless display solution is a “must-have” feature while videoconferencing is usually not needed.
Touch experience and multi-touch experience are not crucial. The screen size should be quite large.
In this room type, trainees and trainers need to be able to display their computers, and to do so simultaneously. The trainer must be able to take control of the trainees’ devices if needed. The trainer also needs to be able to use specific training software and specific whiteboard tools.
The room capacity ranges from 6 to 30 people. Videoconferencing may be useful. Touch experience and multi-touch experience are important. Depending on the size of the room, screen size should be large.
Special locations are venues that require a very specific solution. For instance:
Depending on the specific use case, the importance of touch experience, multi-touch capacity, robustness, and videoconferencing capability will vary significantly.
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