What is an Interactive Flat Panel and How Do They Work?
Interactive Flat Panels (IFPs), additionally known as “good boards,” take two already efficient instruments and mix them collectively to make a uniquely helpful gadget that may improve your education or presentation. Whereas bodily whiteboards have strengths and weaknesses, and digital entry has its personal distinctive alternatives for content material presentation, an Interactive Flat Panel strikes an excellent steadiness between these two choices.
An Interactive Flat Panel or “good board” makes use of Infrared or Capacitive contact sensors to permit contact entry just like the usage of a whiteboard, including a display screen and a connection to digital surroundings that bring distinctive and helpful choices to educating and presenting.
There’s extra to the story across the software program and the assorted capabilities of a wise board, and it’s price understanding a bit of extra about how they work to make the appropriate choice when contemplating an IFP. Let’s cowl the know-how of Interactive Flat Panels first, earlier than diving into the distinctive benefits they provide.
How do IFPs Work?
To grasp how an Interactive Flat Panel works, you’ll need to perceive how the board bodily works. After this, it’s possible you’ll need to try one other of our articles on the best way to use a wise board as a TV, however for now let’s dive into the fundamentals.
How IFPs Detect Contact
There are two ways in which a wise board can detect entry. The overwhelming majority of Interactive Flat Panels use a technique of enter detection known as infrared contact. This includes small infrared lights and cameras constructed into the body. In the event, you can imagine the oblong IFP floor in your thoughts, then think about a layer of rays being emitted over the floor of the display screen.
This invisible aircraft of sunshine can’t be seen by us, however, the cameras constructed into the body are in a position to see them. The cameras, usually positioned on the 4 corners of the board, watch the aircraft in infrared gently. They detect at any time when that layer of sunshine is damaged by a stylus or a finger. In that method, the board can detect when it’s touched, and in addition the place it’s touched.
This infrared tech constructed into the body is the most typical method an IFP detects contact, however, there are some boards that use a know-how known as capacitive contact. This is identical know-how that your smartphone makes use of to sense contact. This works by utilizing {an electrical} present to sense when the display screen is touched. Capacitive touchscreens are usually dearer to fabricate in IFP sizes, which is why the infrared know-how is far more frequent.
Capacitive contact is usually favored as a result of it could produce a cleaner look than the infrared system, and requiring much less bodily {hardware}, however, the infrared know-how has come to a good distance for a lot of decreased value. A very good instance of this progress is the Recordex Era 4 SimplicityTouch, which sports activities with the thinnest infrared sensor body available on the market.
The Benefits of Interactive Flat Panels
Now that you perceive how Interactive Flat Panels work, it’s possible you’ll be asking, what are the principal benefits of an IFP gadget? How the distinctive design of a wise board permits you to transcend a “regular” pc setup?
First, an Interactive Flat Panel is optimized for presenting and educating, with the principle characteristic of the big dimension permitting a full room to have the ability to see the display screen. Whereas this performance may very well be achieved with a projector too, a wise board provides this large-screen format by permitting straightforward and fluid contact entry. Permitting the consumer to write down current data in an extra intuitive and private method.
Projectors additionally usually require calibration, upkeep like bulb-changeouts, and different moving-part {hardware} failure over time (like followers and lens focusing gears). To not point out routine cleansing. In comparison with this, utilizing an IFP is admittedly seamless. Some fashions have no-touch calibration and are able to exit the field. Only a fast wipe-down to take away mud now and again is all the upkeep you want!
Previous to that, a wise board paired with the appropriate packages enables communication expertise that mixes one of the best of each digital and bodily large-screen choice. Software program like Recordex’s XPress annotation program takes all of the guesswork out of utilizing an Interactive Flat Panel, with easy-to-use controls which can be optimized for the wants of the classroom. In actual fact, XPress is bundled with Recordex’s SimplicityTouch IFPs because it’s such an important device for getting essentially the most out of the board.
That’s why, at Recordex, we’ve taken the time to optimize each {hardware} and software program of our Interactive Flat Panels. With a unit just like the SimplicityTouch IFP, paired with XPress annotation, the entire guesswork is taken out from utilizing and managing an Interactive Flat Panel.
