Silicon Labs Enters Human Interface Market With Suite Of Sensing Solutions

Increasingly, electronics products incorporate sophisticated sensing technology to improve the consumer experience by adding intelligence to anticipate user needs and enabling interaction with devices through touch and intuitive gestures. This advanced human interface functionality introduces challenges into the design environment, creating power and performance tradeoffs and introducing a higher level of software complexity.

Silicon Labs' QuickSense family addresses these challenges by leveraging proven, patented and patent-pending technologies and a straightforward design environment to give developers a single source for human interface silicon and software solutions. The company's mixed-signal intellectual property is the foundation for a portfolio of human interface technologies encompassing infrared, capacitive touch sense, high-performance processing and low-power design. The new QuickSense portfolio includes the following:
· The Si11xx family of proximity and ambient light sensors. This family uses a patented single-pulse proximity measurement technique that dramatically reduces overall system power. The Si11xx devices also offer an innovative, patent-pending touchless proximity slider for gesturing. The devices provide extended range under a wide variety of lighting conditions, improving the end user experience and enabling the use of lower cost or lower profile LEDs. The new proximity and ambient light sensors are ideal for portable electronics, displays, kiosks, dispensers, interactive toys and other consumer and industrial products.
· The C8051F800 family of capacitive touch sense microcontrollers (MCUs). Based on a patent-pending capacitance-to-digital converter that enables best-in-class touch sensing, the F800 family eliminates the need for mechanical buttons and sliders. The small- footprint, high-performance F800 touch sense MCUs are ideal for personal electronics, small appliances, residential light controls, thermostat controls, home security panels, set-top boxes and commercial point-of-sale interfaces.
· The expanding C8051F7xx family of capacitive touch sense MCUs. This series of new touchscreen controllers is expected to be available beginning in early 2010 with initial support for two-finger touch screens followed by support for multi-touch touchscreens for applications such as handsets, personal navigation devices, portable gaming systems and other consumer electronics products.

Silicon Labs' new sensing devices are all easily programmable through the QuickSense Studio development software. The QuickSense Studio Configuration Wizard simplifies the integration of human interface technologies in end products, allowing engineers to set up capacitive buttons, sliders and wheels, and ultimately touchscreens, by using an intuitive software GUI that generates all the C code required for the selected functions. The studio enables the configuration of infrared proximity and ambient light sensors through a comprehensive library of application programming interfaces (APIs). The QuickSense Studio also provides a real-time monitoring and adjustment tool enabling developers to thoroughly test and optimize their user interfaces.

Silicon Labs has a long track record of tackling formidable analog challenges and applying innovative mixed-signal design techniques to deliver integrated, high-performance and lower power solutions that are easy to use, said Mark Thompson, vice president and general manager of Silicon Laboratories. By applying our ability to integrate advanced analog peripherals and intelligent processing in power-efficient ICs, we've created a portfolio that will spark fresh innovation in human interfaces for a wide range of electronics products. And with the launch of our QuickSense software environment, we're providing embedded designers with a straightforward way to enable sensing technologies in their products.