Date: 27/02/2011

Touch screen controllers from Atmel supports button, slider and wheel functions

Atmel has announced a new family of QTouch capacitive touch controllers for implementing button, slider and wheel (BSW) functionality on application-specific devices.

The advantages offered by the new AT42QT1070 and AT42QT2120 ICs as per Atmel include they does not require firmware development, reduced bill of materials, lower power consumption and offers industry's greatest proximity range of up to 8 inches to enable unique new capabilities including 3-D gestures.

The key features of these controller ICs are:
Supporting up to 12 sensor channels, 1.8V-5.5V operating voltage range and an I2C-compatible communications interface.
Based on new architecture these touch screen controllers eliminate the need for any external components and uses only one I/O pin for each sensing channel.
Supports a new capacitive sensing method with a faster scan time, lower current consumption and less sensitivity to power supply fluctuations.
Suggested for designing touch screen controller based input interface for applications including home appliances, automotive control panels, TVs, remote controls, set-top boxes, LCD monitors and many others.
Includes Adjacent Key Suppression (AKS) support, self-calibration, auto-drift compensation, noise filtering, and a selectable sleep interval.
Both devices may be configured for stand-alone mode or communications mode.

"Atmel's new family of touch controllers allows easier implementation of touch button, slider and wheel interfaces. This family is the industry's first to allow designers the ability to design capacitive interfaces without the need for external components," said Steve Berry, director of marketing, Atmel Corporation. "Compatible with the Atmel QTouch Library, we are excited to offer this new family of BSW capacitive touch controllers with the simplicity and ease-of-use that designers want to reliably and robustly support a broad array of applications."

Availability:
AT42QT1070 supporting 7 channels: Now in full production.
AT42QT2120 supporting 12 channels and includes support for a slider or wheel interface: will be in production Q2 2011.

For further details visit http://www.atmel.com/products/bsw