got curious when I realized my bandaid was somehow touchscreen compatible, despite seemingly just being a piece of cloth. nitrile gloves work (7mil thick), and I’ve even got relatively thick work gloves that work.
The modern version is based on capacitive touch. The older versions with the stylus required were mostly resistive where there were two layer matrices in X and Y directions and the crossed resistive connections are calculated. There was also an in between rarer version of the touch screen that was optically driven. These require a special stylus that technically does not need to make physical contact to work, (it was crap compared to capacitive touch).
If you were around back in the day of rabbit ears and television or had a radio that would only work well when you were in just the right spot in the room while you held your tongue at the right angle, that is basically the same principal of capacitive touch. Your body’s electrical properties are more pronounced at higher frequencies and this is effect is used to detect where changes are happening on an X/Y matrix.
The actually connections are a tin oxide coating on the glass that is conductive but so thin that it is optically clear. Ben on Applied Science on YT has shared some videos where he uses this same coating technique for various projects.
Capacitive I believe. The charge in your finger is being sensed
see that would bake sense but isn’t nitrile non conductive? its like rubber
and like cloth? defiantly not conductive. unless its just thin enough? definetly not the case with those work gloves. also different nitrile gloves, those are normally non touchscreen, and you need special ones that are.
I think it’s just so thin that the touchscreen sees little effect in the capacitance
It may have small fibers of something that is conductive.
For example have some work gloves that aren’t capacitive? Sew an X pattern into it with capacitive thread and you’ll be good to go.
As for nitrile gloves if the material is thin enough it won’t impede the capacitance sensing too much and they’ll be usable.
Idk about bandaid, but my glove has small metal mesh that makes it touch compatible.
“Glove thickness is usually given in the unit mils, which is equal to one one-thousandth of an inch”
7 thousandths of an inch is well within the thickness that generates a measureable capacitance.
Hoot is not really correct, it’s not the charge in your body. It’s the difference in charge across an insulator sinking some amount of farad energy, and that change in sink capacity being measured.
You could make your own capacitor with some insulating resin paint and a couple metal plates.
They just let the natural electrical signal of your body pass through unimpeded usually by being made of or having conductive material woven through them.
