why should you calibrate a touch screen monitor in stock

Screen Calibration has left people scratching their heads for years. Common questions like “Why do I need to calibrate my monitor if my clients aren’t calibrating theirs?” are all too reasonable and provide an interesting argument to the debate. Well, I’m here to tell you, you NEED to calibrate your monitor.

For those flying under the radar: screen calibration is the process, in which you adjust the colors, brightness and various spectrums of your monitor to get the most accurate color results for your photos. Not only is this important for print, but if your monitor is casting too warm or too cool colors, the majority of your clients will be far less impressed with how the images you retouched on that screen look.

There are two major contenders in the screen calibration game – the Datacolor Spyder system and the X-Rite Colormunki. In all honesty, comparing the two screen calibration systems is much like comparing a Ford and Chevy Truck. While there are minor differences between the two, they both largely do the exact same thing – which is correctly calibrate the colors and brightness on your monitor.

Basically, monitors are designed to have a 6500K color temperature and a brightness at 100cd/m² for their default settings. These numbers are great for retouching, however monitors are mass produced, and are unable to hit these number with pinpoint accuracy.

Whether you’re retouching images for your own portfolio or for a client, you certainly don’t want to be editing in the wrong color temperature from the get go, without realizing it.

False. While these types of monitors are highly regarded as the best for retouching and color accuracy, it doesn’t change the fact that they need calibration.

The term IPS monitor, for example, just means that the monitor has a large viewing angle, so that despite looking at the monitor at an angle, you won’t run into issues with color inconsistencies. While these monitors are typically at a higher price point and calibrated upon the manufacturing process, this does not mean they’re still calibrated after a few weeks or month of use.

This answer is simple – look at the rule of averages. If monitors can easily differ 500K in white balance from each other on either side (cool/warm) of the color spectrum, wouldn’t you want to hit bulls-eye in the middle of the two?

If you’re positive your monitor is calibrated at 6500K, and your client’s uncalibrated monitor is set around 6200K, it will still look better on their monitor if your screen was also uncalibrated and set around 6800K.

It can be particularly useful in case of aging touch screen components where the standard calibration does not result in a good touch linearity, the older is a touch screen the highest number of calibration point may be required to get a good calibration.

Plot Calibration data option allows to evaluate the linearity of the touch screen component as result of the calibration procedure by displaying a comparison graph between the ideal linearity (black line) and the touch screen component linearity calculated by PenMount’s application program (blue line).

Touch screens are finding their way into a variety of embedded products. Most touch-enabled devices will require a calibration routine. Here"s a good one.

Resistive-type touch screens are normally used in cost-conscious designs. Their construction is simple, their operation is well understood, and the hardware and software required to support them is readily available from multiple manufacturers.

Despite the advantages of resistive-type touch screens, devices equipped with them almost always require that a calibration algorithm be the first task to run when the final product comes out of the box. Calibration is necessary because it is difficult to perfectly align a touch screen"s coordinates to the display (LCD or otherwise) behind it. If a button or other “live” feature on the display is to be properly activated, the coordinates of the area touched on the screen must be sufficiently close to the coordinates of the feature on the display. Otherwise, the software may not correctly act upon the soft button presses.

This article proposes a calibration algorithm for resistive-type touch screens that is both efficient and effective. This algorithm was developed after identifying the sources of touch screen errors and deriving the optimum method for transforming the coordinates provided by the touch screen to match the coordinates of the display. The calibration method requires that three targets or test points-no more, no less-be displayed and touched in sequence to determine the screen"s individual calibration factors. These calibration factors are then used to translate screen coordinates into true display coordinates.

The cross section of a resistive-type touch screen is shown in Figure 1. The construction is simple. Two sheets of glass are brought together to form a sandwich, the interior glass surfaces having been coated with a thin layer of conductive material. Small glass beads maintain a nominal separation between the conductive surfaces. When a finger or stylus presses against the surface of the glass, the material bends just enough to contact the lower sheet. In this construction the spacing between beads determines the sensitivity of the screen. The closer the beads are, the higher the pressure that must be exerted before the top glass sheet will bend enough to make contact.

An equivalent resistive circuit is shown in Figure 2: a touch screen controller (digitizer or A/D) applies the V sources to the ends of one of the conductive layers, while the other conductive layer-on the opposite sheet of glass-plays the role of the potentiometer wiper. The Vtest value read by the digitizer depends on where the glass is touched and the conductive surfaces come into contact. The controller then translates the voltage reading into a binary quantity representing, for example, the X-coordinate of the point where the screen was touched. The voltage potential is then applied to the second surface"s endpoints and the first surface plays the role of the wiper, yielding a value that represents the Y-coordinate.

Controllers may collect 200 or more samples per second. The sampling rate usually depends on background noise and controller quality. A smart controller may also incorporate useful features like the ability to interrupt the CPU when a touch is detected, as well as the ability to sample continuously at a set rate as long as the screen is being touched. The device idles when the screen is not being touched.

Several sources of error affect the X and Y coordinates produced by the touch screen controller. The most important sources of error are electrical noise, mechanical misalignments, and scaling factors. User idiosyncrasies may also play a role if, for example, the finger or instrument used to activate the screen does not maintain continuous contact or pressure against it. Any of these errors can produce unusable data, and all need to be compensated for if the touch screen data is to be useful.

Electrical noise triggered by thermal or electromagnetic effects and system design weaknesses are omnipresent in all kinds of electrical systems. In the case of a touch screen, the A/D conversion is particularly susceptible to electrical noise because of the high input impedance of the A/D front-end circuitry. In addition to carefully laying out the printed circuit board containing the touch screen controller, noise problems are normally addressed by adding low-pass filtering to the A/D inputs. Software also comes to the rescue, usually discarding one or two of the least significant bits of the A/D conversion and implementing algorithms to remove from the sampled stream those data points that fall outside permissible ranges. The same software algorithms may remove errors introduced by the user. Such errors normally manifest themselves as sampled points that fall well outside permissible limits as the applied pressure varies.

Mechanical misalignments and scaling factors are the errors addressed by the calibration algorithm proposed in this article. Consider the images in Figure 3. The circle represents an image shown by the LCD under the touch screen; the ellipse represents an exaggerated set of coordinates that the touch screen could produce if the user were to trace the round image shown by the LCD. The reconstructed image appears rotated, translated, and scaled by a different factor in each direction. The challenge for the calibration algorithm is to translate the set of coordinates reported by the touch screen into a set of coordinates that accurately represent the image on the display.

To derive a general solution to the problem, it is convenient to describe each point as a mathematical quantity. We see from Figure 4 that it is possible to describe each point on the display as a vector PD and its corresponding equivalent, as reported by the touch screen, as a vector P.

It is also reasonable to assume that P and PD are related by a quantity that transforms the display coordinates into the apparent touch screen coordinates, like this:

where M is the appropriate transformation matrix and the object of this exercise. If we can assign values to the elements of the transformation matrix M, then we can solve for all PD points given the P points reported by the touch screen.

Let us proceed under the assumption that each display point can be obtained from a corresponding touch screen point, but that the touch screen point has suffered rotation, scaling, and translation.

If we express the points as (X,Y) pairs based on the vector"s length and angle, both the display and touch screen points in question can be represented by the following equations:

If the reported touch screen points have experienced rotation because of touch screen misalignment, and qr = qD – q is the angular misalignment of the reported point, an intermediate point is expressed by:

Each of the X and Y dimensions is also scaled by its own factor, which we will call KX and KY. Accounting for scaling produces the following equation, which comes closer to describing a display point in terms of screen point coordinates:

We can now make a key, pragmatic assumption in order to represent Equation 5 in a form that will enable us to solve for its unknown quantities. While the touch screen may be rotated with respect to the display, the rotation angle qr should be sufficiently small that we can assume sinqr

The advantage of Equation 7 is that we have expressed actual display coordinates in terms of touch screen coordinates. Restating the above equation we get:

The previous equations seem almost intuitive. Remember, though, that they are only valid when the angular misalignment between the display and the touch screen is small.

Common calibration algorithms use data from two to as many as five sample points to collect calibration information. The exercise above assumes that display point coordinates can be calculated from touch screen coordinates, and that by making simple assumptions we can obtain calibration data by using three sample points-no more, no less. Three sample points are needed because Equations 9a and 9b each contain three unknowns. With three sample points we can obtain sufficient information to set up and solve the simultaneous equations.

Sample points should also be selected based on practical considerations. They must yield non-redundant simultaneous equations, they must not be too close to the edge of the touch screen (where non-linearities are more likely to occur) and they must be widely spaced to minimize scaling errors. The set of points shown in Figure 5 labeled P0, P1, and P2 meet the suggested requirements. Those points are roughly 10% off the edge of the screen, as far apart as the display geometry allows, and yield the following non-redundant equations:

We need to solve for A, B, C, D, E, and F. Once these parameters are known, obtaining display coordinates is as simple as plugging the raw touch screen data back into Equation 9.

The code in sample.c assumes that your device implements a routine to collect calibration data before attempting to use these functions. An outline of the proposed calibration process is shown in Listing 1. After taking those steps, the calibration procedure is complete and your applications can begin receiving accurate position information from the touch screen system. The function getDisplay-Point() is intended to be called within the touch screen controller"s interrupt routine, after the routine has filtered and debounced the data coming out of the digitizer. In a typical implementation, calling getDisplayPoint() would be the last step needed before a point of touch screen data could be placed in the user-input queue.

1. Call setCalibrationMatrix() with a perfect set of values (see sample.c) to set the touch screen driver to provide raw (non-translated) data. This way you do not need to build special functions to access the data. Instead you simply get coordinates from the same mechanism as your program.

Integer 32-bit math is required because the raw numbers provided by most digitizers are 10-bit quantities, and Equations 15 and 18 may yield 31-bit signed values. The equations, as implemented, will work with touch screen digitizer resolutions up to 1,024 pixels, which may be suitable for display resolutions up to about 512 pixels (height or width).

If you want to use these formulas for larger touch screen resolutions, it will be necessary to either use 64-bit integer values or judiciously scale input values or intermediate results to avoid register overflow when calculating the calibration factors.

The function getDisplayPoint() does depend on the calibration matrix containing a set of valid quantities to provide reliable results. The structure of the sample provided uses automatic variables to highlight the relationship between the display coordinates, screen coordinates, and the calibration matrix, but in a practical implementation the calibration matrix may best be a global structure that is properly initialized at boot time.

The touch screen calibration algorithm described here is simple, flexible, and capable of correcting for common mechanical errors. These errors-translation, scaling, and rotation-result from mismatches between the display and the touch screen located above it. They can be compensated for with mechanical means, but the proposed software solution reduces demanding electromechanical manufacturing and quality problems.

Windows 10, 8, and 7 are designed to work well with touch-enabled displays, but things can go wrong. When you tap the screen, and it behaves as if you tapped a different place, that usually indicates a calibration issue. Touchscreen calibration usually takes care of that type of problem.

The touchscreen calibration tool works by displaying a pattern on the screen and then overlaying it with a series of crosshairs. By tapping each crosshair in sequence, you show Windows exactly how to configure the touchscreen.

When calibrating a touchscreen, it"s essential to tap the actual location of each crosshair. If you tap anywhere else, you end up with an improperly configured touchscreen that may be unusable. In that case, connect a keyboard and mouse to reactivate the configuration tool.

If you don"t have a keyboard or you don"t see the Windows logobutton, swipe up from the bottom of the screen in Windows 10 or swipe from the right in Windows 8 to access the menu.

Type calibrate. In Windows 8, you might need to type tablet, and in Windows 7, you might need to type touch. In all three cases, select Calibrate the screen for pen or touch input in the search results.

When you search for calibrate, the first result is typically calibrate display color. Even if Windows highlights this result, this is not what you need. Make sure to select Calibrate the screen for pen or touch input.

Configuration issues don"t cause all touchscreen problems. For instance, if the touchscreen doesn"t work at all, it might be turned off or disabled, or the correct driver might not be installed. In that case, enable the touchscreen or update the drivers.

In other cases, figuring out why a touchscreen doesn"t work can be more complicated. If calibrating your touchscreen didn"t help, check out our in-depth guide to fixing a broken touchscreen.

Open Touch_Screen_Calibration.vi and run the VI on your target. If your monitor is connected via USB, you will see the calibration screen shown in Figure 2.

Disconnect any USB mice attached to the TSM and then complete the on-screen calibration procedure and the settings will be retained on your NI Linux Real-Time target until you format or re-install software.

After the commands are entered, the touch screen monitor connected to your target will bring up the screen shown above in Figure 2. Follow the on-screen instructions to successfully calibrate the touch screen.

Once you have enabled the embedded UI, restart your target for changes to take effect. Upon reboot, you should see a screen similar to this on your monitor:

After the commands are entered, the touch screen monitor connected to your target will bring up the screen shown above in Figure 2. Follow the on-screen instructions to successfully calibrate the touch screen. Remember to disconnect any USB mice connected to the TSM before calibrating.

The following steps must be done in a Windows environment, even if your touch screen is being used with a different operating system. After connecting the touch screen USB to a Windows device, follow the steps below.

7. This will bring you to the main menu. Make sure that the touch screen USB is connected to your device. If it is connected correctly, it will state "Already link equipment". Should the device not be correctly installed, it will state "Have not linked equipment". In order to disable right click, the touch screen must be properly connected.

8. To calibrate your touch screen, click on the Calibration button. Cross-hairs will appear on the display. Touch the center of each cross-hair as they appear.

9. After calibration is completed, you will be prompted to save the changes. Click Yes to save the calibration or No if you wish to re-calibrate. If there was an error while calibrating, an error will appear asking to either save the calibration or reset. It is recommended that you calibrate the touch screen again to ensure accuracy.

10. Disconnect the USB cable from the Windows device and reconnect to the intended device. Touch should now function as expected in the new operating system.

11. If performing Calibration does not resolve Flipped Orientation issue, the Touch Rotation Tool will need to be used. Use this guide for the Rotation Tool

12. If the above steps do not resolve the issue, please contact the TSI Touch Customer Service team at 802-874-0123 Option 2; email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; or by visiting our TSI Touch website and clicking on the red “Help” icon in the lower right corner of the webpage.

Touch function stops working suddenly when you use the touch monitor or laptop? Have troubles such as touchscreen is unresponsive, touch screen input is offset or writing is intermittent? Let’s troubleshoot these common touch issues and fix them pronto!

When encountering touch problems, please check whether the hardware connection is correct first.(The screen of touchscreen laptop is integrated all-in-one, and the wiring is inside the case. Usually, it is not necessary to check hardware connection problems. You can move forward to next part for software settings.)

External touch monitors usually adopt the USB interface to transmit touch signals. If the USB ports on either side of the computer or touch monitor is faulty, the solder pins are tin stripped, the pin tongue is loose, etc., the touch may be intermittent, unusable, or the screen may not light up at all.

This happens more likely if you plug and unplug the cables frequently. Please re-insert the cables again to ensure the cables are inserted into the right ports and the plugs are not shaky or loose. If the touch screen still does not work, try to buy a new cable from the original manufacturer!

Grease and dust can potentially cause poor electrical sensing on touch surfaces. Use a lens cloth to gently wipe the touch screen and wipe with a little water for the tough stains. Do not spray too much water or detergent.

When touch function stops working, check whether Windows Update and BIOS are updated to the latest version. If it still does not work, follow the following settings step by step to resolve possible problems!

If the USB driver on Windows 10 is not successfully updated, not only the external touch screen cannot be activated, but other USB devices may encounter problems.

Connect the monitor to the computer and go to [Device Manager] → [Human Interface Device]. If the touch monitor connection is successful, the touch screen will appear in the list of Human Interface Devices. Right click the touch screen and follow the steps to update the driver.

Click [Start] → [Control Panel] → [Tablet PC Settings], and then click [Setup] under the display tab. When "Tap this screen with a single finger to identify it as the touchscreen" appears on the screen, just touch the screen.

If the resolution setting does not match the screen, the touch position will also be affected. For example, when you touch certain positions on the screen, it responds on correct points, but clicks on other positions may activate other areas next to them instead.

When the cursor is on the desktop, right click for the setting menu → click [Display settings ] → choose the touch screen (number 2 screen) and select the corresponding resolution(for example, On-Lap M505T resolution is 1920x1080), and then click "Apply".

Click [Start] → [Control Panel] → [Tablet PC Settings], or search for [Calibrate the screen for pen or touch input]. Open [Tablet PC Settings] and select your external monitor from the drop-down menu of Display → Click [Calibrate] → Tap the crosshair each time that it appears on the screen. → click "Yes" to save the calibration data .

Touchscreen laptops and smartphones usually need to be paired with a dedicated stylus. For On-Lap series touch monitors, you can choose a passive stylus with a conductive rubber or plastic disc greater than 6mm diameter. The induction of active styluses differs from brand to brand. If your writing or drawing is intermittent, it is recommended to use a stylus with stronger induction (e.g., Adonit Dash3)

The Mac OS system does not support external touch signals, and the touch monitor can only display images when connected to the computer. This is a limitation of OS compatibility. If you need an external touch monitor for Mac, you can use BootCamp, a multi boot utility that comes with Mac OS. It assists you in installing Windows 10 on Intel-based Mac computers . When you switch your MacBook to Windows 10, you can operate the external touch monitor!

When you connect 15.6-inch On-Lap M505T touch monitor to an Android phone supporting USB Type-C DP Alt, M505T can receive touch, video and audio signals at the same time. However, in case the Android phone OS is not updated to Android 8.0 or latest, you cannot use the touchscreen function on M505T touch monitor.

Note! Not every smartphone with a USB-C connector can be connected to a touch screen. You must inquire your smartphone manufacturer about whether the model supports DisplayPort Alt mode for outputting video signals.

As the projected capacitive touch technology is sensitive to electricity difference, the electromagnetic interference or unstable power current input may cause touch ghost clicks—the screen responds to touches you"re not making. In this case, please eliminate the following interference from your environment :

Sockets in public spaces usually have complicated wiring and power adoption. you may experience current fluctuations occasionally. When the power input to the touch monitor comes from these sockets or extension cords, you may encounter problems of not being able to operate touch screen normally.

Please try to stay away from kitchen appliances in use, such as electric cookers, microwave ovens, etc. Even table lamps may emit a lot of low-frequency electromagnetic waves. These electrical appliances that emit electromagnetic interference during operation may affect the use of your touch screen.

We hope the article has helped you to solve the problems of using touch monitors. If you have any other questions about touch screens, please write to GeChic Customer Service or contact us via FB.

a.Open Search by swiping in from the right edge of the screen (or if you"re using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen and moving the mouse pointer down), and then tapping or clicking Search

a.Open Search by swiping in from the right edge of the screen (or if you"re using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen and moving the mouse pointer down), and then tapping or clicking Search

You could take your monitor to a professional to have it done, but doing it yourself is relatively quick and hassle-free and will greatly improve image quality. Manufacturers keep pumping out displays with new technologies like 4K UHD resolution, high dynamic range (HDR), and curved monitors, providing a veritable feast for the eyes — but only if they are properly calibrated.

Step 2: Now that you are in the calibration tool, follow the on-screen instructions to choose your display’s gamma, brightness, contrast, and color balance settings.

Step 2: Your Mac’s step-by-step instructions will walk you through the calibration process once you have found and opened the software utility. Just follow the on-screen instructions to choose:

W4zt Screen Color Test: This simple webpage provides you with several color gradients and grayscale color boxes you can use for quick comparisons, along with an easy gamma test you can run. It’s nice to have so many tests on one page, making this solution great for fast and dirty calibration so you can move on.

The best way to avoid this problem and ensure that you calibrate your monitor correctly is by purchasing a calibrating device. You’ll need to spend a decent amount of money for the best control and precision. Still, there are affordable alternatives to help you achieve consistent color across all of your monitors.

These devices are user-friendly, involving a simple three-step process of fastening the device to your screen, plugging it into a USB port, and opening the calibration software. When the software starts running, you just have to follow the setup procedure. It’s fairly intuitive, but if you have trouble, you can find tutorials online that will walk you through it.

The following steps take you through how to calibrate the C5581QT touch screen monitor. When connected to a Dell System running 16.04 or older version of the Ubuntu Operating System (OS).

xinput map-to-output [touch device] [monitor input]: please you have to identify the monitor device number from LS command and what is the video port used HDMI or DP

You will then be asked to touch various points on the screen to verify that the cursor appears at the position touched. If the cursor appears at the position touched, click the green arrow to accept and exit out of the calibration program. If the cursor does not appear at the position touched, click the blue curved arrow and the calibration program will run again.

A test screen appears. You may tap various places on the screen or you may drag around; the cursor should follow in either case. Either the Accept button (multi-touch driver) or the green check mark button (single touch driver) must be tapped to permanently store the calibration.

The green bar in the single touch driver is a progress bar – be sure to tap the green check mark button before the bar times out. If the bar times out, the calibration data will be discarded.

Some monitors (those with PCAP or infrared touch technology) will return to the main driver screen immediately after the upper left target is touched (the other two targets will not be displayed and the test screen will not be displayed). This is because these touch technologies are precalibrated at the factory, and a single touch is used only to detect orientation (landscape or portrait) and position if the monitor is part of an array of multiple monitors.

If you experience operational issues with the touchscreen system either during or after installation, use the tips below to help you determine the source of the problem.

If “No Elo touchmonitor found” is displayed on the screen, install the latest drivers. Touchmonitors with the dual serial/USB interface require the latest drivers. If you are replacing an existing installation and see this problem, you should update your touchscreen driver with one from the Elo Web site Driver and File Downloads page.

Be sure to calibrate the L5006tm touchscreen monitor. Touch response must be aligned to the video image (this is sometimes called calibration). Normally this need only be done when the touch drivers are initially installed.

Serial Connection - Run the comdump diagnostic utility to determine if the touchscreen, the serial touch controller, the computer"s serial COM port and the associated cabling are connected and functioning properly. Download the latest version of comdump.exe (7K) from the Elo Web site Driver and Files Download page. You should save the file where it can be accessed easily - either to a floppy or to the root of your hard drive. Comdump is a DOS application, so if you are running one of the Windows operating systems you must either boot to a DOS boot diskette or disable the driver so you can access the COM port from a command prompt.

USB Connection - If the Human Interface Device (HID) is not listed in Device Manager after a USB touchmonitor is connected, check to determine if a file named mouhid.sys is in the \windows (or winnt) \system32\drivers folder.

The touch can not be held longer than 10 seconds. IntelliTouch controllers have a built-in two minute untouch time-out. By default, the 4.20 Universal driver generates an untouch after 10 seconds of constant touch. The untouch time-out can be changed by modifying a registry key. This time-out will override any registry time-out value if the registry value exceeds 120 seconds (120000 milliseconds). To change the time-out time:

A cursor is not visible. To make the cursor visible, first, open Control Panel > Elo Touchscreen > Mode tab. Check if the Hide arrow mouse pointer box is checked; if yes, un-check it and click OK. If a mouse is not installed on the computer, Shut Down the computer, install a mouse, then restart the computer. The cursor should now be visible. You may then Shut Down and remove the mouse, or leave it connected, as desired.

If connecting multiple monitor systems, all monitors must be configured to have independent resolution control (as in two monitors, each at 1024 x 786 resolution), rather than a single, large desktop (as in 2048 x 768). Multiple individual video cards are automatically set up as individual monitors. Some multiport video cards can be configured either way; in this case, the video driver must be set up properly. Once the multiport video has been properly configured, the Elo Universal driver should be removed and reinstalled. Some multiport video cards can only be configured as a single large desktop, and they will not work with Elo"s multiple monitor driver setup.

A friend of mine got me a EloTouchSystems 2216 AccuTouch USB TouchMoitor, if was apart of a POS system they were replacing, and I am trying to calibrate it on Linux Mint. I have downloaded the xinput_calibrater app and ran it. Here the output from the program:

Additional Information: After posting the question, I realized I did not mention what the touch screen was doing. When I touch the screen and move my finger up and down on the screen, the cursor moves in the opposite direction.