Finicky fingerprint reader

[unimorpheus]

Does anyone know how to improve the fingerprint reader performance? Sometimes I can swipe my finger and it will take on the first try but this is rare. Most times I have to swipe several times if not moisten my fingers. I know this is a capacitive system that needs to form a degree of conductivity between finger and reader but it would be nice if the threshold could be adjusted. At this rate I may have to forgo the fingerprint reader and revert to the password option. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[christopher_wolf]

Yeah, it is fringe capacitance for the most part; so you get cut some slack there along with the glass window on top of it. There are, however, some environs that the Fingerprint Reader seems to disagree with. It doesn't have to do so much with what is on your finger (not that I am saying it shouldn't be clean and kinda grease-free). I know of at least on spot near me where the FPR exhibits a decrease in the integrity of the reads; I do, however, think that it might have something to do with certain RF frequencies as it *always* works, even in that "gray area" where it sometimes doesn't, if I setup one of my working fluorescent lamps. Replace that with a different lamp setup and/or different FLs and the FPR again has a slight amount of trouble on the first swipe.

Is this in a certain area only or just in general? If it is just in general, you can try to replace the palmrest+FPR part (although, given your current location, the logistics of this might prove somewhat of an obstacle).

[unimorpheus]

I have observed temperature dependence with the fingerprint reader. If the machine is booted from a cold start the fingerprint reader will be more accepting. If the machine has been up and running for a while I will have more difficulty with the reader. The parameters for the reader appear to me far more limiting than I would expect. When a Thinkpad is configured with the fingerprint reader is should also include a device to monitor relative humidity, ambient temperature, current body temperature on the user, relative skin conductivity of the user, moon phase and sun spot activity. If any of these parameters are out of the accepted range then the password option should be presented automatically.