The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C, USA, is home to the world’s largest collection and display of aircraft and spacecraft, and is also home to various interactive exhibits for the 6.7 million annual visitors.

New Mexico-based Ideum, was drafted in to fix up the ageing table display, and opted to use Zytronic’s high-performance touch sensors. Zytronic supplied an 84” diagonal touch sensor to the museum, which was then fitted by Ideum.

Jim Spadaccini, Ideum’s founder, comments: “The Smithsonian was looking for an update of this proven exhibit. We made some minor improvements to the interface and improved the software itself, but the biggest upgrade was to move the exhibit from a projection-based, optical touch table to a highly reliable, hardened and responsive touch table.

“We effectively rebuilt the entire exhibit from the ground-up to withstand the rigors of nearly constant use at what is one of the busiest museums in the United States.”

Not only did Ideum work on the installation of the new exhibit, but also on the software that is needed to power the display. Ideum redesigned this to include more interactive elements, including the ability to virtually launched the visitor’s designs, look at their final creation in the middle of the table, and send an email of it to their personal accounts.

Recently, Ideum has also worked on other famous American museums with Zytronic products, including the National Museum of the American Indian, also in Washington D.C.

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