Microchip’s mTouch
London, England: Microchip’s mTouch technology is the first in a series of patent-pending releases supporting projected capacitive touchscreen solutions across the company’s portfolio of 8-, 16-, and 32-bit PIC MCUs. The announcement is supported by the release of the mTouch Projected Capacitive Development Kit, featuring the first device to implement the technology, the 8-bit PIC16F707.
Projected capacitive touch sensing extends resistive and existing capacitive touch-sensing technology to include multi-touch and gesture sensing, enabling users to implement robust glass-front user interfaces that simplify user interaction. Typical applications include global positioning systems, thermostats, mobile handheld units, and other devices that use smaller displays with a finger input. The technology is available via a royalty-free source code license.
The mTouch Projected Capacitive Development Kit includes a 3.5-in. sensor mounted on a sensor board, a projected capacitive board with the PIC16F707 MCU, and fully functional firmware. The open source code supports sensors with up to 32 channels. And, the kit’s graphical user interface tool enables easy parameter adjustment.
The PIC16F707 features two 16-channel capacitive sensing modules (CSMs) that can run in parallel for increased sampling speed. The MCU operates from a wide input voltage range of 1.8 to 5.5 V, with a typical projected capacitive sensor application operating current of 1.5 mA at 5 V.