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Demos Overview

What is Fore Light™?

At RapidKeypads.com, we can add lighting to your capacitive touch keypads.

Since our capacitive touch system can sense through non-conductive materials, we can put our lighting layer on top of the button. This puts the lighting layer closest to the graphic overlay making it the brightest available.

This is why we call our lighting FORE LIGHT™ and not back light!

In addition to our uniform, diffuse lighting of the full keypad, we can selectively light specific keys as well as add indicator lights to show status.

 

Configurations

We can design an interface to have the following forms of lighting:

These forms of lighting can be used exclusively or in combination to achieve the desired effect.

 

Features

Some of the benefits of our lighting solutions offer are as follows:

  • Uniform lighting over a large area
  • Can be used in low power applications
  • Long life, essentially no fading
  • Low cost, no inverter or complex drivers compared to EL
  • Lighting can be achieved while maintaining a thin profile
  • Design flexibility, easily customizable

A microcontroller is at the heart of our fast touch system. This puts us in a place where we can add intelligence to the lighting solutions we provide for your keypads.

      lit light bulb in yellow

Fore Light™ Technology LED Lighting and Dimmer Switches

  • Tactile Feedback tactile response icon

    Do you feel the click when pressing a button? Would you miss it if it were gone? Our research indicates: yes!

  • Audio Feedback audio feedback icon

    Light shows at concerts are programmed according to the musical beats per minute of a song playing.

  • Fast Touch™ Electronics Fast Touch™ icon

    Have you ever used the soft glow of your cell phone as a mini-flashlight? Lighting buttons is our specialty.

 

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Capacitive Touch Soft ON, Soft OFF


Demonstration Video

Light Dimming Effects

For instance, consider the video of a capacitive touch keypad we developed recently. This keypad is a very good example of our complete touch panel backlighting. As soon as the interface is powered on, the backlighting turns on and the brightness slowly increases till it reaches its maximum. We refer to this as the "soft on" or "wake up" effect. As long as the keys are being used, the keypad stays at its maximum brightness.

If the capacitive touch interface remained inactive or there were no key presses detected for a certain period of time, the backlighting begins dimming and finally turns off. We refer to this as the "soft off" or "sleep" effect. The user then reactivates the interface by touching any one of the buttons and the backlighting exhibits the "soft on" effect.

 

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Capacitive USB Multimedia Keypad


Demonstration Video

Selective Lighting

In certain applications, select keys of the touch interface needs to be lit up to indicate the state they are in. The mute button in a multimedia keyboard is a great example of such a key. This is demonstrated in the video below. We can see how when the mute button is pressed, the key is selectively lit indicating the sound from the computer has been muted.

Customers should note that adding selective lighting to a keypad will increase the cost of the keypad during the prototyping and production stage because of the added complexity.

 

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Lighting can Express Emotion


Demonstration Video

Uniform RGB Lighting

Today, products can express emotion. Imagine your product has RGB (Red, Green, Blue) LEDs that flash in paterns indicating certain states. For example, we can flash a particular color in a heartbeat to indicate the device is charging.

Even in a well lit room, it is easy to see the uniform lighted logo flash and change colors.

 

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LED Lighting Solutions


About LED Lighting

The LEDs used in our interface can also be RGB LEDs. This is especially useful while creating a slider for position control. The slider LEDs could be all lit in a particular color (blue), and when the user chooses a position it could be lit up in a different color (red). A picture illustrating this is shown.

Medical Device Control

Medical Lighted Keypad

 

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Touch Slider Indicate Range Of Operation


Demonstration Video

Sonic Generator

Various color LEDs on a slider could also indicate the intensity level at which your device may be operating. For instance, green LEDs could be used to indicate acceptable, lower or safer operating ranges, while red LEDs could be used to indicate not acceptable, higher or dangerous operating regions.

This video showcases an example of a capacitive touch slider interface that uses indicator LEDs to control the operation of a sonic generator. The lower operating regions are indicated by green LEDs, while the higher operating regions are indicated by red colored LEDs.

 

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Combining Lighting Effects


Demonstration Video

Capacitive Touch Appliance Control

Your project may need to indicate the status of a particular feature in addition to complete back lighting. This can be easily accomplished by using our capacitive touch interfaces.

In this example, we used Bi-Color LEDs to indicate two different states of each button. Several more states can be displayed by flashing these indicator lights. For demonstration purposes we have modified this product to show latching, momentary and back light dimming effects. The last part of the demonstration shows how we can use indicator LEDs to show the level of fluid in the device.

 

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