Ruggedized Flat Panel LCD Displays

The product that I came across a few days ago seem to be all rounder it can be used at home or for industrial purposes. The product ensures long life for your electronic equipment and gives excellent protection to lat your product longer. All this means that you can go a little bit rugged on electronic products that you use.

The product offered by the company are defense against external materials including dust, water and moisture, which may damage electronics to a huge extent.

The ruggedized flat panel LCD displays that are developed for high reliability, shock and vibration tolerance, survival of high temperature, and corrosive environments. The product has a versatile IP grade mechanical design with full range 6.4” to 20.1” which makes the product to be strong and rugged, with rack and panel mounting feature makes it easier for adjustments also it is easily compatible with the newer LCD monitors and with the size availability it can be used with a variation of screens. The design makes integration of products with thermal and anti-vibratory system design thus taking care of your most important system by preventing them from moisture and dust. With such flexibility offered by the product it can be easily used or installed at various places like outdoor kiosk or a drive by ATM where the amount of dust and moisture often tend to be on the higher side. The industrial and factory automation areas are one of the most prone regions for dust moisture and small particles that fly around in the cutting areas IP is the ideal product to safe guard automated machine screen which get constantly bombarded. The added advantage of it been waterproof makes it better suited for such environments where there is a mix of technical and mechanical work.

The IP allows you to protect your valuable resources and extended their life period which invariably leads to higher productivity for business. It is a product that has been well thought out to make sure it give the maximum of benefits with the least cost something which is every product promises but the IP just delivers it.

Sunlight LCD Technology: (with Features & Specialties)

In general, people have to bear with really poor quality of display on the LCD with less than 500 nits* and 2 to 1 contrast ratio**. At i-Tech we are here with a contrast ratio** of 5 to 1 and a display with 1000 nits*. The display on screen of the LCD by i-Tech is completely visible and readable even in the strong sunlight. Due to this excellent image quality under the shade, this i-Tech LCD is highly recommended as the sunlight readable/outdoor readable in any indoor or outdoor environment.

*nit: a unit for Luminance: Brightness will be the simpler and better understandable term for anyone. Here ‘nits’ is to determine the perceived picture quality in an LCD. Our mind reacts quite positively to visually brighter objects. Brighter display on an LCD with 1000 nits will surely be with easier readability and more pleasant to human eyes comparing to a standard active-matrix LCD with a screen luminance around 250 nits. No doubt, outdoor or indoor, the sunlight readable LCD displaying on screen with more luminance looks more beautiful
Scientifically if one is interested to know deeply about it. A nit, the unit for hotopic brightness, is calculated in candelas per square meter (Cd/m2) or nits.
{In US, the British unit Foot-lamberts (fL) is also frequently used. To convert from fL to nits, just multiply the number in fL by 3.426 (i.e. 1 fL = 3.426 nits)}.

** Contrast ratio (CR):
This isn’t just one more determinant of brightness, it actually determines the sharpness and crispness of the perceived picture’s display quality on a screen under different circumstances. Definition-wise, Contrast ratio (CR) is the ratio of luminance between the brightest “white” and the darkest “black” that can be produced on a display. A printed glossy magazine could have color pictures with CR up to 15, to make them look better, than those in simple newspapers with the same resolution.

In a dark room with a CR of 300 to 700 any AMLCD, exhibits or displays picture quality pretty well. However, in an ambient illumination, the CR of such an LCD considerably reduces and goes down further to 2 in strong direct sunlight.

We may simply understand the whole thing by an example: A 200 nit standard LCD measured in a dark room has 300 CR, but will have less than a 2 CR under strong direct sunlight. The fact is that the surface glare increases the luminance by over 200 nits both on the white and the black that are produced on the display screen. Here the luminance of the white is somewhat over 400 nits, and the luminance of the black is more than 200 nits. The CR ratio then becomes less than 2 and the picture quality is drastically reduced.

This is where, the i-Tech sunlight readable LCDs differ totally. Brightened with 1500 nits, LCD screen gives a CR more than 8, with same glare under the strong direct sunlight. The resultant picture quality on screen of these units is surely much better.

Viewing Angle: Importance and relevance--The angle, at which the image quality of an LCD degrades completely and gets to be improper, for the projected purpose. With the physical movement of observer side ways to an LCD, the image on it degrades in three ways:
Ø Drop in Luminance
Ø Drop off Contrast ratio (at large angles)
Ø Shift in colors

Here the viewing angle’s definition is very much dependent on the application and type of LCD. Many manufactures take it as the angles where the CR (contrast ratio) is ^3 10; for simpler application CR goes down to ^3 5, for the viewing angle’s definition here.

For the outdoor application, the viewing angle of LCD cannot be defined based on CR alone; as the luminance drops below 200 nits under the bright ambient light. At i-Tech, we define viewing angle based on CR as well as luminance.

Inverters for your units:
Invertors, as an electronic circuit, convert DC voltage into AC voltage. CCFLs (Cold cathode fluorescent lamps) power all the LCD backlights, require invertors.
i-Tech Technology manufactures inverters for all its products. In addition, Applied Concepts and ERG provide inverters for our products, as well.

Importance of Dimming range:The capability of an inverter to
perform backlight luminance adjustment is its dimming range or dimming ratio.

Dimming range of the inverters used in notebook computers and LCD monitors is generally 10:1. That is, the luminance is adjusted from 100% down to about 10%.

In case of i-Tech Technology sunlight readable LCD modules, very high brightness backlights used are able to deal with the wider dimming range, i.e. 200:1. This wide choice of dimming ratio adjustment (100 to 0.5%) not only saves the LCD from remaining too bright in the night or dark. It also lengthens the backlight life and saves power, with the related thermal management issues.

Thermal management issues with i-Tech backlights

A Significant amount of power consumption for brighter backlight-system, LCD being used under sunlight, could be cause for concern. Nevertheless, temperature issues are very well handled here through proper thermal management design, in case of i-Tech manufactured units.