Touchscreen controller features next-gen infotainment systems

The family offers an advanced hover capability that can detect a finger up to 35mm above the screen and a force touch capability that provides accurate measurement of the pressure applied by multiple independent fingers.

The family’s integrated acoustic and haptic feedback control provides faster response times for a better user experience compared to systems where the processing of a touch and pressure applied are not measured on-chip.

“Car makers’ requirements for the infotainment user interface are significantly different from those of consumer electronics touchscreens, but up until now, touchscreen solutions have been developed primarily for the consumer market and only qualified later to meet automotive requirements,” said Dr. Jing Mu, Senior Director of Automotive HMI Marketing at Cypress.

“Cypress designed the TrueTouch CYAT817 family from the start with a focus on providing automotive-grade quality and enabling the ultimate user experience for in-vehicle applications. This integrated solution demonstrates our market leadership with best-in-class response times, unmatched features in a single device and lower system costs compared to multi-chip implementations.”

The Automotive TrueTouch CYAT817 controller family implements its Hover and Force Touch features while meeting stringent automotive Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) requirements. With a power efficient 32-bit Arm Cortex-M processor and optimised analogue front-end, each controller can replace the mechanical on/off button of an infotainment system with a capacitive touch sensor, enabling sleek, modern interior designs.

The controllers deliver faster response times by integrating decision and control processing on-chip for acoustic and haptic feedback so that systems are no longer required to transmit data on a touch input via Controller Area Network (CAN) or a Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) backchannel for distributed implementations to be processed in the head-unit.

The CYAT817 controllers can support two standard host interfaces such as I2C and SPI, along with a CAN interface for either higher system integration or to implement redundancy for safety relevant applications per ISO 26262. The controllers protect against hacking with a cryptographic engine that securely encrypts communication with the head-unit, preventing unauthorised access of touch data containing sensitive user information that could allow reverse engineering of PINs or passwords.

Cypress AutoArmor meets car manufacturers’ most challenging EMC requirements for chip-level emissions (IEC 61967), conducted (IEC 62132) and radiated (ISO 11452) immunity, as well as for system-level (CISPR 25) specifications. AutoArmor uses automatic frequency hopping to prevent false touches caused by EMI from other electronic systems, and it uses TX frequency spreading to reduce electromagnetic emissions by up to 30%.