Adjusting Touch Sensitivity on Elo Touchscreens

This article explains the touch sensitivity adjustment capabilities on touchscreen products from Elo — Now part of Zebra Technologies.

Why Adjust Infrared (IR) Sensitivity?

Infrared touchscreens ship from the factory pre-configured at maximum sensitivity. Because IR touch grids operate by projecting invisible light beams slightly above the surface of the front glass, it is physically possible to break an active beam and trigger a touch coordinate event without making physical contact with the glass.

This can sometimes lead to confusing behavior—for example, if a user hovers their finger just above the screen while deciding where to tap. Decreasing the touch sensitivity (increasing the threshold) helps minimize these accidental hover-touch events.

How to Adjust IR Sensitivity in the Driver

You can adjust the IR sensitivity by editing the EloOptions.ini configuration file included with the Windows Multi-Touch driver package:

1. Open the EloOptions.ini file located in your driver directory using a text editor (such as Notepad).
2. Locate the IrUTR variable, which controls the Unintentional Touch Rejection algorithm for IR monitors.

3. Adjust the variable value. The valid sensitivity scale ranges from 0 to 5, where a higher number results in less sensitivity.

   Note: By default, this parameter is set to maximum sensitivity: 
   IrUTR = 0
4. Make sure you edit the active line and not the commented description line (lines beginning with a semicolon ; are ignored by the driver).
5. Save the file and restart the system or the Elo driver service to apply the new sensitivity threshold.

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