Capacitive Touch MCUs Boost Channel Count

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CONFERENCE, MAY 2011 – Enriching the company’s capacitive-touch MCU lineup, the R8C/36T-A and R8C/38T-A series offers up to 36 independent touch channels, making them suitable for advanced human-machine interfaces and real-time control. The 18 additional devices offer a number of enhancements to the TSCU hardware block designed for touch-key sensing applications. The block supports up to 36 independently connected electrodes and can complete a full scan of all channels in less than 10 ms. The TSCU includes additional features for the rejection of electrical noise, such as fully automated random and majority-vote measurements for more reliable touch determination. The devices add two hardware blocks: the Event Link Controller (ELC) and the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) unit. The ELC connects events between peripheral modules to trigger operation without CPU intervention. The CRC unit offers the ability to perform error checking of built-in memory and communication data more efficiently, which is essential for safety standards such as IEC 60730. The R8C/3xT-A MCUs are sampling now with production set for the fourth quarter. RENESAS TECHNOLOGY AMERICA INC., San Jose, CA. (408) 382-7407.