Patent ID: 8614681

Claim:
A method for determining the number of objects that are present on a touch sensitive surface, said method comprised of: 1) providing a plurality of parallel X electrodes disposed on a first layer of a substantially transparent substrate, and a plurality of parallel Y electrodes disposed on a second layer of the substrate, wherein the Y electrodes are co-planar with and orthogonal to the X electrodes; 2) measuring a signal on each of the plurality of X electrodes, proceeding from a first side of the X electrodes to an opposite second side; 3) analyzing the measurements in order to identify objects by determining if any two measurements of adjacent X electrodes show a positive slope in signal strength, and which passes from below a threshold value to above the threshold value, so as to indicate the presence of a conductive object, wherein finding the positive slope includes selecting the threshold value for the signal strength and selecting a threshold unit, and then assigning the positive slope to be a measurement of signal strength of two adjacent electrodes, wherein the signal strength must rise from below the threshold value to above the threshold value, and wherein the total change in measured signal strength must be at least two threshold units; 4) analyzing the measurements in order to identify a negative slope after the positive slope; 5) repeating steps 3) and 4) for each conductive object identified on the touch sensitive surface while moving towards the second side; and 6) using a threshold counter to determine the total number of objects that are on the touch sensitive surface by incrementing a threshold counter when analysis shows that a positive slope has been measured and decrementing the threshold counter when analysis shows that a negative slope has been measured, and assigning the total number of objects on the touch sensitive surface to be the number of times that the threshold counter is incremented.