Abstract
A wearable system adds touch input to artificial-fingernail displays while keeping the nail itself passive: no battery, no wireless transceiver, and, in the preferred embodiment, no touch-sensing circuitry on the nail. Each nail unit carries an electronic display and a transparent touch electrode. Operating power and image data reach the nail over a single decorative conductor - fine insulated wire concealed in a hollow jewelry chain - from a body-worn hub, such as a finger ring or bracelet, housing the battery, controller, and Bluetooth radio. The same conductor also carries the touch-sense signal: the hub measures the capacitance of the nail electrode through the conductor, either during idle windows between display-data bursts (time sharing) or by a continuous low-amplitude carrier (frequency sharing), with the conductive chain body serving as a return or actively driven guard. Variants include a dedicated sense strand within the chain bore, segmented electrodes for directional swipes, a nail-side touch controller reporting events over the same conductor, and sequential or frequency-coded scanning of multiple nails from one hub. Taps and swipes change displayed colors and advance text; ordered touches across adjacent nails scroll a message spanning several coplanar fingernails; touch combined with the hub's motion sensor adjusts continuous parameters. Published as a defensive technical disclosure.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Goldstein, Benny, "Touch Input for Passive Fingernail Displays via Hub-Side Capacitive Sensing Over a Shared Power-and-Data Jewelry Conductor", Technical Disclosure Commons, (July 06, 2026)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/10802