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Thread: A Non-Tactile Pushbutton

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    294

    A Non-Tactile Pushbutton

    [edited from support email]

    My goal is to have the subject tap on a stationary object, one without any
    travel distance - like tapping a finger on a flat surface such as a desk.

    Is this feasible?
    Last edited by JEC; 06-20-2007 at 10:33 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    294
    As it turns out, I know exactly how I'd design this for you.

    A company called QPROX (qprox.com) sells integrated circuits which can be used to design touch-sensitive control surfaces - similar to an iPod control wheel, or the flat panel on your microwave.

    The touch sensitive areas can be defined as any shape, and on nearly any non-metallic material.

    There is a certain processing latency involved with these chips (typically tens of milliseconds) - but since it's a fixed quantity, you can compensate for it when you take your measurements.

    It would then be simple to interface one of these ICs with our regular USB button box engines.

    However...

    It occurs to me that DirectRT can accept microphone input and record elapsed time between the presentation of a stimulus and reception of a sufficiently loud sound. I wonder if a simple microphone placed in close proximity to the tapping fingers wouldn't solve this problem straight away?
    Last edited by JEC; 06-19-2007 at 12:21 PM.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    294
    Blair says:

    I think the microphone idea is great--so long as an audible click could be heard the audio RT would work. Maybe add some kind of plastic thimble on the finger hitting the hard surface.
    and...

    If a single smack on the computer's touchpad equals a mouseclick, you could probably use the mouse click DirectRT codes for input.

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