Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) has launched the ultra-low-power MSP430 16-bit microcontroller capacitive touch portfolio. The company claims the MSP430 devices offered in this portfolio feature the world’s lowest-power touch sense capabilities. The new hardware plus free software solutions give developers easy-to-use, cost-effective options for microcontroller-based capacitive touch applications, while still benefitting from the battery-saving features of MSP430 devices.
The royalty-free MSP430 capacitive touch library gives developers the option to add touch sense capabilities to any MSP430 microcontroller. The open source software library eliminates the need to develop complex touch sensing algorithms and supports various capacitive touch sensors, including buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity. Although the software library supports all MSP430 devices, some include new peripherals optimized specifically for touch sense applications.
Key features and benefits of the MSP430 Capacitive Touch Portfolio
- Free capacitive touch library enables capacitive touch buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity sensors on all MSP430 microcontrollers, eliminating the need for developers to create complex touch sensing algorithms
- Software library consumes as little as 1 KB of code space, minimizing memory requirements and enabling touch sense applications at a reduced system cost
- MSP430 Value Line G2xx2 and G2xx3 devices with capacitive touch sense IOs offer memory ranges of up to 16KB Flash and 512B RAM and optimized efficiency enabling ultra-low-power touch sensitive buttons down to 1µA
- Upcoming MSP430F51x2 devices will include new MSP430 peripheral, Timer_D, a high-performance timer featuring a 4 nanosecond resolution, enabling high-precision touch sensing
- The easy-to-use Capacitive Touch BoosterPack for the MSP430 LaunchPad is a low-cost way to jump start development for touch sensitive scroll wheel and proximity sensors
- Supported by free, downloadable software debuggers and compilers, including Code Composer Studio IDE and IAR Embedded Workbench
Print