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Silicon Labs Introduces High-Performance Touch Sense Microcontrollers

28th October 2009

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The new C8051F800 microcontroller (MCU) family is said to offer the industry's fastest capacitive touch sense capability. Leveraging Silicon Labs' patent-pending sensing technology, the F800 family enables developers to add sophisticated touch sense interfaces to a wide range of consumer and industrial electronics products such as set-top boxes, residential light controls, thermostat controls, home security panels, commercial point-of-sale (POS) interfaces, portable electronic devices and small appliances.

The F800 MCU family features a patent-pending capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC) that enables best-in-class touch sensing in end products. The high-resolution CDC, which features a 40 microsecond acquisition time combined with a 25 MIPS CPU, provides sophisticated and highly responsive touch sense functions to replace mechanical buttons, sliders and wheels. Advanced 16-bit resolution enables the CDC and firmware to compensate for changes in geometry and laminates that may occur between prototyping and production, making the F800 MCUs accurate but forgiving and improving end-product reliability. The CDC requires very little CPU overhead, allowing the MCU to perform other tasks and improving system efficiency.

Most electronic systems are being optimized to reduce power consumption, which is often a challenge when adding features like touch sensing. The F800 offers an innovative wake-on-touch capability, enabling the MCU to be placed in power-saving modes, yet wake quickly upon a touch sense event, ultimately saving overall system power.

The F800 touch sense MCU family is supported by the QuickSense Studio, a common development environment for all of the QuickSense devices including the F700 high-pin count touch sense MCUs and the Si1102/Si1120 proximity and ambient light sensors. The QuickSense Studio configuration wizard allows designers, using an intuitive software GUI, to select which functions they want implemented such as capacitive touch sense buttons, sliders and wheels, and then easily auto-generate the software to set up and calibrate these functions. Designers can also test their implementation and review a graphical display of the system performance.

Silicon Labs' touch sense MCU family delivers accurate and fast performance along with a host of features that reduce system cost and improve reliability in space-constrained applications, said Mark Thompson, vice president and general manager of Silicon Laboratories. When paired with our infrared sensors, our touch sense MCUs also enable smart motion sensing and deliver power savings, which translates into longer battery life and improved system efficiency. Supported by a common development environment, the QuickSense devices enable designers to quickly and reliably add advanced human interface features to their end products.