Technology

Resistive

A resistive interactive whiteboard has a series of wires beneath the surface, by applying pressure the user creates an electric field that informs the system where the user is pointing or traces the movements to create images. The benefit of resistive is that any object can be used to interact with the white board including a special colour coded pen or even a finger. The main negative is that the surface is not durable and can be damaged easily by using a normal marker pen.

Digital

A digital interactive board uses a hard surface much like the type of dry wipe board encountered in classrooms and businesses. Behind the surface is a matrix of electronic wires, this matrix knows exactly where the user is pointing due to the position of the digital pen the user has to hold. The benefits of digital whiteboards are that the boards are extremely robust allowing the use of all traditional marker pens without any worry of damaging the surface. The only drawback is that if the digital pen gets lost the interactive element of the board stops working until the pen is replaced. Digital boards are more accurate than resistive producing better quality results.

Laser Boards

The lasers are often hidden within the bezels of the device where there will be a series of such lasers, as the individual uses the device they break the beams and via trigonometry the system again traces the movements. Like digital boards these offer a more robust surface solution however the lasers are very sensitive and can become misaligned easily and therefore can deliver poor results.

Infra Red

As with laser, the device uses infra red beams or infra red scatter; either way the device locates and traces the user's movements. This is strong solution delivering strong performance with the ability to use a very robust surface (with portable IR devices the user can select any surface to make 'interactive').