modern ribbon controllers anyone ?

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

bnillson at hotmail.com wrote:

<<They might be made of the same resistive material thats
used for touchpanel displays used on PDA's and pen computers!

Besides, any one know where one can get hold of some of those
for some experimenting??>>

I was in an electronics store today, thumbing through the latest issue of 
"Circuit Cellar" magazine, and they have a good article of using resistive 
touchscreens (the kind used on touch-screen computer monitors).  They gave a 
couple of sources for the touchscreens, but I can't remember them right now.  
I'll try to look them up and get back to the list.

I'm pretty sure that the screens are purely resistive, and as such, would 
have an analog output (as opposed to a matrix-switch output).  The examples 
in the magazine article showed them being connected via A/D converters to PIC 
micros, but they would probably be even easier to interface with our stuff.  

Those screens are transparent, and if you attached one to a sheet of clear 
(or colored) plexiglas, it would make a very cool looking controller surface 
- especially if you lit it from the sides with LED's!

Michael Bacich