TI offers the world’s lowest power capacitive touch solutions with new easy-to-use software, silicon and tools for all MSP430™ microcontrollers

Enabling the world’s lowest power touch sense capabilities on all MSP430 devices, Texas Instruments announced the ultra-low-power MSP430 16-bit microcontroller capacitive touch portfolio.

Building on TI's embedded processing expertise, the portfolio introduces new hardware and free software solutions that gives 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. The MSP430 Value Line G2xx2 and G2xx3 devices include capacitive touch IOs, which enable developers to interface directly with capacitive touch pads without external components. Additionally, developers can look forward to upcoming MSP430F51x2 devices boasting Timer_D, a new high-resolution timer that enables high-precision touch sensing. Rounding out the portfolio are TI’s easy-to-use, low-cost kits, including the new Capacitive Touch BoosterPack, a plug-in for the MSP430 Value Line LaunchPad development tool, which allows for rapid evaluation and development of touch sensing applications. Additionally, the new MSP430F5529 experimenter board gives developers a highly-integrated evaluation platform to use touch sense buttons with a wide range of peripherals and sensors.

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