Safety Key

SolutionsHY-LINE SolutionsSafety Key

Patented switch solution

Combination of two technologies (optical and capacitive) for a safe release

Easy to use, elegant glass surface, flush front panel - these are characteristics that you can expect from a PCAP design. Unfortunately, there are situations where unintentional or unwanted activations of the PCAP touch screen occur, whether by electromagnetic interference or water wetting the front.

Security through redundancy

In critical applications, you want to be sure that no false activations occur. The Safety Key offers all the advantages of the PCAP sensor and combines it with an independent second level that monitors touch input with an optical measuring principle. Only the combination of two events leads to an operation being passed on to the system behind it.

Patent pending

The patent-pending process enables the development of high-quality surfaces with touch input and offers the security of a mechanical button. The Safety Key is not a finished product, but a demonstrator for the technology that can be integrated into your own products.

Today more than ever, the industry needs innovations and new approaches to master the challenges of the present and future. But which solutions really stand out from the crowd? And which solutions offer companies real added value?

The “Best of Industry Award” has been answering this question since 2016. Together with the brands of the Vogel Communications Group konstruktionspraxis, PROCESS, LABORPRAXIS and DeviceMed, MM MaschinenMarkt only honors the best of the best.

The winners in the individual categories are determined 100% by the market via reader voting.

After a five-month voting phase with over 20,000 votes cast, HY-LINE made it to the final of the “Best of Industry Award 2024” in the “Medical Technology” category with the Safety Key, and was thus recognized as an innovation that makes a decisive contribution to changing research, diagnostics and therapy.

Infopaper: HY-LINE Safety Key

Security through redundancy

PCAP technology is widely used and has almost completely replaced other touchscreen technologies. Despite all its advantages, it also has a disadvantage: it triggers at the slightest operation, even if it was not intended. If a second touch technology is combined to compensate for this weak point, a far more reliable input medium can be developed. A message is only sent to the system if both touch technologies recognize a touch event in the same way.

The Safety Key, as presented here, is not a finished product, but a demonstrator for the technology that can be integrated into your own products.

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The demonstration device displays the status of each channel with an LED for evaluation. In the target application, only the combined output is required, which triggers the desired switch event in the subsequent device. Since touch sensors work without haptic feedback, but this is desirable for ergonomic reasons, this output can also activate a vibration motor that gives the operating finger the feedback that the desired function has been triggered.

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