ITAC Systems, Inc.

Responding to strong interest from its industrial automation and medical equipment OEM customers, ITAC has introduced PS/2 and Sun versions of its new Dome Technology input devices. ITAC's new MOUSE-TRAK Dome products offer more ruggedness than industrial trackballs and better precision and control than sealed touchpads. These new devices use a deformable dome mounted over a miniaturized motion encoder mechanism to capture user inputs. In these products the user moves the top of the deformable dome, much as they would move the ball in a normal trackball, to communicate the desired direction and speed of cursor movement.

Don Bynum, President of ITAC Systems reports that "These devices are ideally suited for extremely dirty environments such as mines and to applications such as clean rooms where aggressive use of cleaning solutions make other input devices not viable. The new MOUSE-TRAK Domes, while inherently less precise than our trackballs, have the advantages offered by a ruggedized and sealed touch pad, but add significant precision, tactile feedback, and sensitivity that touch pads are, so far, lacking."

In medical applications and wafer fabs, the use of aggressive isopropyl alcohol (IPA) wipe-down procedures often damages the mechanisms of low-end mice. The procedures can also cause clouding of the encoder window of optical "no moving parts" trackballs over time, resulting in failure.

In some industrial automation applications there is so much dust and grit, sometimes corrosive dust and grit, that even ITAC's widely used MOUSE-TRAK Industrial becomes contaminated, … even with its dust guard installed! In both medical and industrial applications, loss of mouse functions can result in serious and expensive system downtime at critical moments. ITAC's new dome input devices offer very high tolerance for environmental contaminants at affordable prices. Pricing ranges between $200 for single units down to $110 in OEM quantities.

The new MOUSE-TRAK Desktop Domes are built using the same rugged, ergonomically designed case as the widely used MOUSE-TRAK Industrial. These new products have three mouse buttons plus ITAC's unique "speed key" allowing instantaneous changes in cursor response speeds. As a convenience, ITAC offers OEM designers the option of downloading case assembly drawings in AutoCAD DWG format from ITAC's web site at www.mousetrak.com. Complete technical specifications are also available via the Web.

Plug and Play Convenience

Like all of ITAC's products, these new devices offer easy installation. Just plug them in. There are no special software drivers to install - they work with the drivers that come with your operating system (for USB users, Windows98 or Windows 2000 are required).

Priced at $200 (end-user quantity-one pricing), the MOUSE-TRAK Domes are well below the cost of ruggedized input devices on the market today.

A Family of Precision Input Devices

The MOUSE-TRAK Domes is the most recent member of the MOUSE-TRAK family of precision-control trackball input devices, including the evolution MOUSE-TRAK, MOUSE-TRAK Personal, MOUSE-TRAK Professional, the MOUSE-TRAK Desktop Industrial, and a line of panel-mountable trackballs.

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