Featured Product: Microchip rolls inductive touch sensing

Microchip Technology has launched its mTouch Inductive Touch-Sensing Technology to augment its capacitive touch-sensing portfolio. Inductive touch sensing allows users with gloves, and on surfaces that contain liquids, to activate electronic functions on panels made of plastic, stainless steel, or aluminum.

Such sealed touch sensing is an alternative to traditional push-buttons, which, the company says, improves reliability and lowers total system costs. Major applications include automotive because of the technology's aesthetics and ability to reduce accidental touch triggers; appliances because of the possibility of a stainless steel front panel; and industrial with the technology's robustness.

With the new Microchip technology, designers can integrate inductive touch-sensing with their existing application code in a single standard 8-, 16- or 32-bit PIC® microcontroller (MCU) or 16-bit dsPIC® Digital Signal Controller (DSC), thus reducing total system costs. "Designers can use any Microchip controller with an A/D on board," Vertical Markets Group Senior Manager Mike Ballard told Automotive DesignLine. The technology implementation information is available for download from the Microchip Touch Sensing Design Center.

Items available for download include:

User's manual with Quick-Start Guide for building an inductive touch-sensing application

Application Notes covering hardware and software design practices, with example implementations for inductive touch-sensing solutions, such as:

Inductive-Touch Mechanical Design

Inductive-Touch Hardware

Inductive-Touch Software

Graphical User Interface software tools for analysis of designs, utilizing the PICkit Serial Analyzer Development Tool

Source Code for a variety of sensing routines

Frequently asked questions

For further information, visit Microchip's Web site at www.microchip.com/mtouch.