PrintDisplay: DIY Displays and Touchscreens Anyone Can Print 14
Zothecula writes For years now, we've been promised miraculous new flexible touchscreen displays, but the deployment of such technology in big consumer products, like say the LG G Flex, hasn't started any revolutions just yet. That could soon change thanks to a team of computer scientists from Germany's Saarland University who have developed a technique that could allow anyone to literally print their own custom displays, including touchscreens."
What's the voltage? (Score:3)
"Electroluminescent"? Is this REALLY thin? Or is the voltage substantial, like approaching three digit volts? (Or some third option, like a very low voltage electroluminescent material?)
(I'd check the referenced paper but can't get the time for that for another 12 hours, so if someone else gets to it, please follow up.)
Regardless, this looks very promising. Even if it turns out not to be practical, it should put the pressure on manufacturers to get a move on with commercial products at reasonable price points and improved form factors - or lead to the rise of disruptive competitors.
220V (Score:1)
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all my EL gear is 1100V or 1500V :x
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From the paper: 1.0 mA at 220 Vpp, 230Hz to 390Hz. The display adds 110 m to the substrate.
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For mobile applications, our prototypical controller uses a small driver IC (Model Durel D356B, sine wave, 220 Vpp, 230Hz to 390Hz). This driver IC generates the high-voltage AC signal from a 1.0-7.0V DC power source. If a higher luminance is required, a stronger 0-12.0V driver IC with a slightly bigger footprint can be used (Model Sparkfun DC12V10M, sine wave, 220Vpp, 800Hz to 3.5KHz). A microcontroller (ATmega2560) triggers optocouplers (MOC3063) for multiplexing the high-voltage signal between display pins.
Electroluminescent display (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting project, and some of their samples look quite cool. Only issue I see is that it is EL tech, which requires a rather annoying high voltage step up inverter to drive (around 200V). You used to be able to buy EL sheets that you could cut holes and stuff in to create custom displays, which was quite cool, so this is sort of just a variation of that. EL fell out of favour once LED took over as it was harder to drive and not particularly efficient. Anyway looks like it could be quite a cool system for getting people enthused about engineering/electronics if they can make the print system cheap enough.
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This is pretty interesting. From a brief perusal of TFA, it seems like the only thing hard to DIY is the special ink and paper - both of which could be manufactured by any company considering commercializing this (the authors made the stuff). The electronics are pretty simple assuming that you can avoid electrocuting yourself on 220V.
I would certainly buy a kit even if I have no practical use for it.
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No, "it is the current that kills you" is only true for static electricity.
For circuits, you can't separate the voltage and the current in that way, and the current isn't the variable. You have voltage, resistance, and current. The current is determined by the voltage and the resistance. In an electrocution setting, the resistance is fixed; whatever the resistance of your skin is doesn't change based on what you touch. However much current your body can draw, it will, based on... the voltage. Because the re
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I wonder how cheap it is. Because, couldn't something like this really be first step towards all of those "everything is a computer screen" techs you always see in sci-fi, like fliers with full motion animation and the like? If a whole display can be laid out with an affordable ink, then the only issues in the way of ubiquity are 1) power, and 2) the input signal. A flexible printable battery could enable #1 (just have it as the first layer of your screen), and/or a printed solar cell. #2 would require eit
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Haven't read the original article, but if this is true then the technology is doomed to the buzz of the elecrical driver, which many find to be annoying.