Eleksen makes USB fabric keyboard design available

New smart fabric peripheral designs offered to OEMs and ODMs at CeBIT

Key properties:
- Highly customisable to meet any design requirement
- 100% fabric, low power and light weight
- Compatible with standard USB/HID profile

Hanover, 9th March 2006 - Eleksen, the inventor and manufacturer of ElekTex® smart fabric touchpads used in interface design for consumer electronics, today announced the availability of licensable reference designs of its smart fabric keyboard for USB compatible devices. The reference design is suitable for OEMs and ODMs interested in designing or manufacturing smart fabric interfaces for the growing market of highly portable and mobile computing devices for consumer and industrial purposes.

The USB keyboard is a plug-and-play device, compatible with standard USB/HID profiles. The keyboard can be plugged into an ultra mobile PC or tablet PC to give the user a larger and more convenient interface for entering text on the move. The keyboard requires no batteries as it gains its power through the USB connection and weighs only 60gms.

The USB keyboard is an addition to the Bluetooth keyboard made available at the end of 2005 and offers OEMs and ODMs a range of options for designing flexible and durable interfaces for high value accessories in the growing market for smart mobile devices.

With ElekTex, OEMs can integrate a wide range of interface interactions ranging from simple keyboard button functions to navigation scroll controls and even multimedia gesture controls into their new fabric-based products. In addition, OEMs can further build on these features and exploit ElekTex;s core capability to be programmed and reconfigured by PC applications, which can change the interface’s design and function on the fly.

Carry Case Keyboards
The design of the keyboard sensor can be scaled to support different keypad sizes and to support a range of covering materials. With ElekTex, interfaces can be developed into standalone accessories or can be built into other fabric products, for example, Eleksen expect that the keyboard design will be integrated into carry cases or protective cases for ultra mobile and lifestyle PCs.
Andrew Newman, Product Manager for the keyboard explains: ElekTex gives OEMs a highly innovative interface technology, which supports their needs to develop exciting and feature rich peripherals.

Opening up another ElekTex keyboard design to OEMs and ODMs for technology licensing affirms our interest in taking product design to the next stage with smart fabric touchpad designs accessible to a wide range of consumer electronics manufacturers.

Availability
The technology is available now. Pricing for OEMs and ODMs will be negotiated on a case by case basis taking the following dimensions into consideration: size of the sensor, number of units, type of material and whether the customer is purchasing a licence for the reference design or requires a finished product.

About Eleksen
Eleksen Ltd. is the world leader in touch sensitive interactive textiles for electronics interface design. The company’s core technology, ElekTex®, is a unique electro-conductive fabric touch pad optimized for the creation of flexible, durable and rugged fabric touch screen interfaces. ElekTex® is used in applications ranging from wearable electronic controls for consumer electronics and industrial wear to lightweight, low-power touch interfaces for CE accessories, telematics, military, transportation and space suits. It replaces the hard touch pads, flexi-circuits and polymer switches which have limited the growth of the wearable electronics markets. Eleksen licenses ElekTex® and reference design to manufacturers for use in custom electronics design and also markets a range of ready-to-integrate solutions for garment, bags and accessories manufacturers. The company is backed by an impressive list of investors: 3i, MTI, MVI, Siemens Venture Capital, Vesta Capital Partners and Wireless Frontiers. Eleksen is headquartered in Pinewood Studios near London, England and in Waltham, Massachusetts near Boston. For more information about Eleksen offerings, please visit www.eleksen.com.

Product and company names herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Information

Joel Richman

Senior Account Manager

PAN Communications Inc.

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