kawasaki tft display manufacturer

has a long experience in the market of displays for over more than three decades. The displays include products based on passive, TFT- and LTPS-technology, as well as colour filters and backlights. New display lines are utilizing AM-OLED technology.

The biggest news is of course the new 4.3-inch TFT screen. But it is not just a pretty screen as it includes features that could be found on bigger (read: more expensive) bikes. There is the auto contrast feature; Bluetooth connectivity for music and phone calls; GPS navigation via connection to a phone app; and thankfully a gear position indicator.

Every year, motorcycle manufacturers make various improvements to their lineup, everything from little internal details, to new paint, to full-on redesigns. Over the years we’ve watched these machines get better, faster, and safer. In the 2020 model year, though, the majority of motorcycle manufacturers seem to be hopping on the TFT wagon. What does that mean for us, the riders?

We are all familiar with the Thin Film Transistor, or TFT screen, on our smartphones, hand-held video game displays, computer monitors, and car “infotainment” systems. The technology has advanced rapidly in the last few years, and motorcycle manufacturers have suddenly determined that they are ready for the harsh environment a motorcycle display needs to endure. During an attentive walk around of the International Motorcycle Show in New York City this past weekend, we noticed that new bikeswithoutTFT screens are becoming the rare exception.

Some manufacturers began outfitting their newest bikes with TFT screens a couple of years ago, but the 2020 model year has seen a sudden industry-wide shift. Major manufacturers like BMW, Kawasaki, Honda, and Yamaha, and even smaller companies like Energica, outfit their bikes with a TFT.

All of us who have been riding for many years are used to analog dials and gauges. Some of us are concerned about the longevity of the TFT, and in my opinion, those concerns are valid. Certainly, we’ve all seen our smartphone screens give up the ghost after only a few years of use. Some of us have an affinity for older motorcycles and have repaired or restored those old analog speedometers and gauges. We know that they often work flawlessly for decades. When they need repair, it’s a question of fixing or replacing internal mechanical parts. Not so with the futuristic TFT screens.

Those of us who are not hopeless luddites tend to sing the praises of a screen that can and does change to show machine and engine speed, a navigation display, the state of the motorcycle’s electronic suspension, tire pressure, the traction control setting, and a whole host of other information. The versatility of a TFT over traditional analog gauges is unquestionable: we might soon be able to program them ourselves with our preferred screen settings, just like our smartphones.

From a manufacturing point of view, TFTs simplify the process. The same TFT can be used on every motorcycle in a manufacturer’s lineup, with only a change of software to make the screen bike-specific. Does that mean a TFT will eventually be extremely inexpensive and easy to replace, should it ever go bad? Right now they’re too new to know for sure, but manufacturers are installing them everywhere, so we will all find out soon enough!

Raystar is a global leading LCD panel supplier and specialized in producing TFT LCD Panel, including Color TFT, Monochrome TFT Display and bar type TFT Display. Raystar Color TFT displays are available in various resolutions and offers a wide product range of small to medium-sized TFT-LCD modules from 0.96” to 12.3". The interface options are in MCU / RGB / SPI / UART / 8080 / LVDS. TFT Panel with control board or TFT LCD Panel with micro controller are also available.

According to the Bosch survey nearly 90 percent of riders use their smartphone to prepare or follow-up on trips. One third puts themselves in great danger using their smartphone even while riding. Bosch has developed the smartphone integration solution mySPIN to make the usage of smartphone content safe and more comfortable. Available in the powersports segment since 2018 – this includes for example so-called all-terrain vehicles or personal watercrafts – in BRP vehicles, mySPINnow will be introduced in the motorcycle segment for the first time. Ducati will introduce it together with Bosch’s also new 6.5-inch connectivity display without the split-screen option. “We want motorcyclists to be able to access smartphone content in an integrated and easy way while riding their bike. With the mySPIN platform and integrated connectivity cluster, we have found the right way to do it”, says Vincenzo De Silvio, Research and Development Director at Ducati. From 2021, the solution will also be introduced by Kawasaki.

TFT LCD technology is that interface. All the potential of the data stored between your front and back wheels is released by the dazzling array of shapes and colours displayed by these newest dashboards. They can show you anything and everything, which in turn allows designers and engineers to load you up with more and more electronic features.

These dashes are a combination of the latest liquid-crystal display (good ol’ LCD) technology and the brilliance of thin-film transistors (TFT). TFT and LCD as a team can show us an endless variety of information in incredible clarity and colour, using very little power in the process. It is light weight and takes up very little space, vital considerations when motorcycle designers choose anything to perch above the steering head.

TFTs are certainly not new. The technology was developed in Bell Labs in the USA 60 years ago. It took a while to evolve and become commercially viable. The first TFT LCD colour TV, the tiny Epson Elf, was launched in 1984. This was just two years after Honda dazzled us with the very advanced VF750S, a bike that included an electronic speedo and tacho, as well as an LCD gear indicator, which doubled as a fault-code display.

But realistically, motorcycles of that era didn’t pack the electronic muscle that makes TFT displays almost compulsory nowadays. In fact, Honda perhaps overstepped the mark with its first VF and stripped much of the tech out of subsequent models. Motorcycles plodded along with analogue dials and filament-lit warning lights for years. That was fine while motorcycles were simple mechanical devices, but they’re now far more than that.

Today we need to control all manner of electronics in our motorcycles. Adjustable engine parameters. ABS. Adjustable traction control. A display of info configured for commuting. Another for track days. Entertainment. Communications. Navigation. Our mechanics need access to fault data. They need to update programming. Hell, there was even that scooter that flashed tweets across your screen. Which was that? No, probably best forgotten…

A TFT LCD display can be a touch screen giving you direct control, although dash- or handlebar-mounted buttons, toggles and switches are more common and practical on motorcycles. Arguably, the best setup puts all the controls on the handlebars, where they’re easily and (you’d hope) intuitively manipulated. BMW, for example, has taken great pains to try to make its multi-controller the centre of a logical system, one that demands little direct concentration to manipulate while you ride.

And therein lies the crux of good TFT-based information displays; is it intuitive, so a rider can scroll menus, get warnings, read information and choose settings without having their attention drawn away from the act of actually riding the motorcycle? Distractions kill.

TFT technology is indispensable in avoiding distraction as manufacturers flash more and more information at riders. Apart from the fact that we couldn’t get all the data without TFT LCD screens, we also couldn’t possibly digest it. We’d be facing dashboards that resembled the pilot’s view in the seat of a Boeing 747; dials, lights, buttons, digits and switches everywhere.

There are more subtle advantages of TFT LCDs. Compared with your old-school LCDs, you get better resolution, smoother movement across the screen, sharper contrast and better clarity in sunshine. That last point is a good one when the sun is reflecting off the screen, although there is still room for improvement there.

Viewing angles are a hot topic of conversation among TFT screen users. One drawback of the currently technology is that once you’re a little off-centre from the screen, the detail begins to disappear before the image vanishes altogether. That’s not a problem for us when we’re riding, as we’re centred in front of it and highly unlikely to need to look at it while dangling off the side of the bike.

Another essential factor in the rise of TFT dashboards is their willingness to take input from anything and everything. It will accept multiple digital inputs, giving you access to all your motorcycle’s vital signs, your sat-nav, your communications, your music. Naturally, it will do this wirelessly when the devices warrant it.

There are no limits to the graphic designs that can be assigned to TFT LCD displays. Take your pick of colours, typefaces, sizes, symbols and everything else. From a rider’s perspective, design is vital. Good dash design puts emphasis on crucial information being very visible. The most important info should have the most prominence.

Knowing the name of the person calling you on the phone could be good to know if you don’t want to be sprung wagging work to ride your motorcycle. TFT dashboards can, if the programming is provided, give you choices about what information sits centre stage at any particular time.

The quality of your own eyes may have something to do with whether a dashboard display works well for you, so try before you buy, and check the options available in the menus.

There are plenty of alternatives to TFT LCD screens, some relying on back-lit panels like TFT LCDs do, others emitting their own light. A third type projects images onto a screen. All three types are in use somewhere already, in TVs, mobile devices and more.

A short step up from TFT, IPS (in-plane switching) uses a different means of exciting the liquid crystals, which orientate differently. The result gives wider view angles, more accurate colours and better image quality, but it costs more and has greater power demands. The benefits probably aren’t worth it for a motorcycle screen, simply because we don’t need the quality that, say, a picture editor might demand from their Apple — which is one example of where IPS screens have been employed.

So-called LED (light-emitting diode) screens may imply they are their light source, but the reality is that the LEDs are usually just the source of backlighting for LCDs. In fact, there’s a good chance your TFT LCD screen is just this type.

OLED (organic LED) is different. As the name implies, they’re made from an organic source, electrically stimulated to produce the desired light. This type of display is used in TVs, computers and mobile devices. A handful of cars are using OLED displays, dating back to the Aston Martin DB9’s debut early this century.

Further down the track, electroluminescent displays (ELD), and variations on e-paper and other technologies, may come into play. ELD is already in use in many cars but generally in simpler dashboards than what’s being fitted to current TFT-equipped motorcycles.

Cost and efficiency will determine if and when anything else takes over, but for now TFT plays that role beautifully. Because of our mobile phones and computers, we’re already quite used to looking at flat screens, and we almost instinctively know how to use them as the conduit between us and our technology. Where older dashboards used to give us a page full of information, TFT screens give us a tome of information, displayed a page at a time.

Without TFT screens, we would not have access to the myriad technologies that now add efficiency, safety, entertainment and practicality to our everyday riding.

At the riskof oversimplifying a complex system that would baffle the average brain, your TFT LCD dashboard is created using layers. The thin film containing transistors — the TFT part — is merely one of them, trapped somewhere near the middle, and sandwiched between sheets of glass or transparent plastic.

A backlight behind the dash display is illuminated. However, the liquid crystals in the system block that light. Electrical signals to the crystals cause them to alter their orientation, releasing light. There are also polarising filters to add further control to the transmission of light.

Assuming the electrical impulses are correct, the transistors create a dancing light display to shine through the screen, revealing everything you want to know.

Every pixel ina TFT LCD display has its own transistor, maximising control across the whole screen. Pixel count dictates resolution, so the more pixels you have, the better your screen will look. In theory, there’s no reason why you couldn’t have cinema-quality movies playing seamlessly across your dashboard.

It can also be very efficient, in that the distribution of power is extremely fast, allowing very quick re-drawing of the displayed information, and power is only directed to where it is needed.

Using high-precision electronic control for engine management, Kawasaki models can achieve a high level of fuel efficiency. However, fuel consumption is greatly affected by throttle use, gear selection, and other elements under the rider"s control. The Economical Riding Indicator is a function that indicates when current riding conditions are consuming a low amount of fuel. The system continuously monitors fuel consumption, regardless of vehicle speed, engine speed, throttle position and other riding conditions. When fuel consumption is low for a given speed (i.e. fuel efficiency is high), an "ECO" mark appears on the instrument panel"s LCD screen. By riding so that the "ECO" mark remains on, fuel consumption can be reduced.

Kawasaki’s fully electronic throttle actuation system enables the ECU to control the volume of both the fuel (via fuel injectors) and the air (via throttle valves) delivered to the engine. Ideal fuel injection and throttle valve position results in smooth, natural engine response and the ideal engine output. The system also makes a significant contribution to reduced emissions.

Electronic throttle valves also enable more precise control of electronic engine management systems like S-KTRC and KTRC, and allow the implementation of electronic systems like KLCM, Kawasaki Engine Brake Control, and Electronic Cruise Control.

The Kawasaki Engine Brake Control system allows riders to select the amount of engine braking they prefer. When the system is activated, the engine braking effect is reduced, providing less interference when riding on the track.

Using the latest evolution of Kawasaki’s advanced modeling software and feedback from a compact IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) that gives an even clearer real-time picture of chassis orientation, KCMF monitors engine and chassis parameters throughout the corner – from entry, through the apex, to corner exit – modulating brake force and engine power to facilitate smooth transition from acceleration to braking and back again, and to assist riders in tracing their intended line through the corner. The systems that KCMF oversees vary by model, but may include:

KTRC, Kawasaki"s advanced traction control system provides both enhanced sport riding performance and the peace of mind to negotiate slippery surfaces with confidence. Multiple rider-selectable modes (the number of modes varies by model) offer progressively greater levels of intrusion to suit the riding situation and rider preference.

Less intrusive modes maintain optimum traction during cornering. Designed with sport riding in mind, they facilitate acceleration out of corners by maximizing forward drive from the rear wheel. And because Kawasaki’s sophisticated software bases its dynamic analysis on the chassis’ orientation relative to the track surface (rather than relative to a horizontal plane), it is able to take into account corner camber, gradient, etc., and adapt accordingly.

Clever technology enables riders to connect to their motorcycle wirelessly. Using the smartphone application “RIDEOLOGY THE APP,” a number of instrument functions can be accessed, contributing to an enhanced motorcycling experience. Vehicle information (such as the odometer, fuel gauge, maintenance schedule, etc) can be viewed on the smartphone. Riding logs (varies by model, but may include GPS route, gear position, rpm, and other information) can be viewed on the smartphone. When connected, telephone (call, mail) notices are displayed on the instrument panel. Riders can also make changes to their motorcycle’s instrument display settings (preferred units, clock and date setting, etc) via the smartphone. And on certain models, it is even possible to check and adjust vehicle settings (such as Rider Mode, electronic rider support features, and payload settings) using the smartphone.

Drawing on the know-how and technology possessed by the Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. (KHI), Kawasaki’s supercharged engine delivers high engine output while maintaining a compact design. The key to achieving this incredible performance lies in the engine’s supercharger – a motorcycle-specific unit designed completely in-house with technology from the Kawasaki Gas Turbine & Machinery Company, Aerospace Company and Corporate Technology Division.

The importance of high efficiency in a supercharger is that, as the air is compressed, power-robbing heat gain is minimal. And while many superchargers are able to offer high-efficiency operation in a very limited range of conditions, the Kawasaki supercharger offers high efficiency over a wide range of pressure ratios and flow rates – meaning over a wide range of engine speeds and vehicle speeds. This wide range of efficient operation (similar to having a wide power band) easily translates to strong acceleration. The supercharger’s high efficiency and minimal heat gain also meant that an intercooler was unnecessary, greatly saving weight and space, and enabling the engine’s compact design.

In general, eight out of 10 of those surveyed were in favor of integrating smartphone and instrument cluster information. To address this desire, some of BMW’s new motorcycles will come with Bosch’s 10.25-inch TFT (thin-film transistor) display with split-screen capabilities. Riders will now be provided with the information they previously had to look to the instrument cluster and their mobile device for, in one location.

The new Bosch display will utilize their smartphone integration system called mySPIN to enable content from motorcycle-centric apps like REVER to display appropriately on one half of the screen, while speed or warning indications will display on the other half.

The content being shown can be regulated by the rider with controls on the handlebar. The screen itself is TFT LCD — this technology improves image quality over the traditional LCD displays. Similar Bosch mySPIN split screens will appear on Ducati and Kawasaki motorcycles, as well, but the display sizes may be smaller.

We have thousands of standard products that are in stock and available from our Seattle, WA and Hong Kong warehouses to support fast product development and preproduction without MOQ. The stock covers TN, STN LCD display panels, COB, COG character LCD display, graphic LCD display, PMOLED, AMOLED display, TFT display, IPS display, high brightness and transflective, blanview sunlight readable display, super high contrast ratio display, lightning fast response displays, efficient low power consumption display, extreme temperature range display, HMI display, HDMI display, Raspberry Pi Display, Arduino display, embedded display, capacitive touch screen, LED backlight etc.  Customers can easily purchase samples directly from our website to avoid time delays with setting up accounts and credit terms and shipping within 24 hours.

Many of our customers require customized OEM display solutions.  With over two decades of experience, we apply our understanding of available display solutions to meet our customer’s requirements and assist from project concept to mass production. Using your ideas and requirements as a foundation, we work side by side with you to develop ideas/concepts into drawings, build prototypes and to final production seamlessly. In order to meet the fast changing world, we can provide the fastest turnaround in the industry, it takes only 3-4 weeks to produce LCD panels samples and 4-6 weeks for LCD display module, TFT LCD, IPS LCD display, and touch screen samples. The production time is only 4-5 weeks for LCD panels and 5-8 weeks for LCD display module, TFT LCD, IPS LCD display, and touch screen.

Japanese motorcycle manufacturer, Kawasaki, unveiled the new 2020 version of its middleweight naked motorcycle, the Z650. All-new Kawasaki Z650 now gets revised styling and new-age instrument cluster which comes with Bluetooth connectivity.

There are not many changes made to the bike, however, they are enough to give the naked bike a fresher feel. The 2020 version gets new LED headlight with a redesigned cowl, a 4.3-inch full-colour TFT display, more comfortable pillion seat as well as new Dunlop Sportmax Roadsport 2 tyres.

The instrument cluster of the Z650 now has connectivity options via the Kawasaki Rideology mobile app. You can even change the appearance of the cluster and access ride logs as well as other bike-related options. The Rideology app provides call or email alerts, vehicle info, a riding log, vehicle settings, and the ability to customize the display. The display also adjusts for day or night riding.

There is no change made to the frame and powertrain and the bike continue to use the lightweight trellis frame which is hung on 41mm telescopic forks up front and monoshock at the rear end. To haul the bike to zero, there are twin 300mm petal discs at the front and single 220mm disc at the rear. Kawasaki has added only dual-channel ABS as a safety measure and bike doesn’t get any other electronic aids. The weight of the bike is also about 3kg lower than the outgoing model, hence an increased power to weight ratio.

At present, the Kawasaki Z650 is priced at Rs 5.69 lakh ex-showroom in India. Looking at the changes made, the 2020 version will not cross the Rs 6 lakh mark which will still be a good deal to consider.

TFT Display: Triumph"s new generation TFT instrument display clearly presents key information and facilitates easy rider interaction on the move.My Triumph Connectivity accessory brings even more capability with turn-by-turn navigation, GoPro control, plus phone and music operation.