Adafruit
Resistive Touch Screen to USB Mouse Controller - AR1100
Getting touchy performance with your screen's touch screen? Resistive touch screens are incredibly popular as overlays to TFT and LCD displays. If you wan...
Getting touchy performance with your screen's touch screen? Resistive touch screens are incredibly popular as overlays to TFT and LCD displays. If you want to connect one to a computer you need something to handle the analog to digital conversion. Most converters we've found are not very easy to use, and are 'fixed' - making them difficult to calibrate. The AR1100 is a nice chip that solves this problem by acting as a touch->USB converter and also comes with calibration software. The calibration software is Windows only, but once you've calibrated you can use the screen on any OS. The AR1100 shows up as a regular Mouse or Digitizer HID device so no drivers are required. We've tested it sucessfully on Mac, Windows, and Debian Linux (Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi). Other Linux distributions may or may not work, but if you're running Linux you're probably used to that.
This breakout board features the AR1100, which has both USB and UART interfaces available. 99% of the time, you'll want to use the USB interface but there is some functionality for getting TTL UART data out (see the datasheet for details) There is also a red LED that lights up to indicate when a touch has been detected.
For the screens that have 1mm pitch FPC cables, you can plug the cable right into the connector. The majority of medium/large touchscreens have that kind of connector. If you have another kind of touch screen, the four X/Y contacts are available on 0.1" pitch breakouts so you can hand-solder or wire them. We set this breakout up for 4-wire sensing only.
You can pretty much just plug and play to get started, for more details including calibration software, check out the AR1100 page. Plug any 1mm-pitch 4-wire resistive touchscreen to the on-board FPC connector, when you plug into a computer's USB port you should see a new device and touching the screen will cause the mouse cursor to move around.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- breakout
- A breakout is a small circuit board that makes a tiny or hard-to-solder component easier to connect to with standard pins. It matters because this OLED module can be wired into a microcontroller project without needing to solder directly to the display’s fine contacts.
- FPC
- FPC stands for flexible printed circuit, a flat flexible cable or connector style often used where space is tight. It matters because this breakout needs the correct pin count and pitch FPC cable to connect reliably to the display or high-speed interface.
- HID
- Human Interface Device is a USB device class used for keyboards, mice, gamepads and similar controls. If a board supports HID over USB, it can act like an input device to a computer without needing a custom driver.
- LCD
- LCD stands for liquid crystal display, a screen technology that uses a backlight and liquid crystals to show images or text. It matters because LCD modules usually need a display driver and enough controller pins or a bus interface to send image data.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode is a small electronic component that lights up when current flows through it in the correct direction. In this kit, LEDs create the flashing effect, so polarity and correct soldering matter for the project to work.
- TFT
- A thin-film transistor display is a common type of colour LCD used for graphics screens. Knowing a product is for TFTs helps you check that the driver board matches the display’s connector, resolution, backlight, and signalling method.
- UART
- UART is a simple serial connection that sends data over separate transmit and receive wires, often labelled TX and RX. It matters because this module is designed to replace a wired UART cable with a wireless link while keeping the same serial data format.
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