[Editor's Note: This was originally posted on Low-Power Design] 

To launch the HMI (human-machine interface) development tool projects, I will be focusing my efforts on exploring development kits along with their accompanying software tools and APIs (application programming interface) for touch interfaces. This project includes addressing button and touch screen form factors. Microchip has graciously volunteered their mTouch development kits for the first project. We are currently in the logistics planning phase. At this time, the proposal consists of two example projects.

The first example project focuses on touch button designs by using the mTouch Capacitive Touch Evaluation Kit (part # DM183026) to develop a six (or more)-button board based on a “custom” shape and size for a typical end design. The kit contains one 16-bit and two 8-bit mother boards, based on the PIC24F, PIC16F, and PIC18F, and four daughter boards that support 8 keys, 12 matrixed keys, a 100 point slider, and a 255 point slider. The kit also includes the PICkit Serial Analyzer to connect to the PC Host for the MPLAB mTouch Diagnostic Tool Plug-In software. The goal of this kit is demonstrate the function-specific daughter boards.

The second example project ups the development complexity by focusing on a touch screen design by using the mTouch AR1000 Development Kit (part # DV102011) to configure, calibrate and test an 8-wire analog resistive touch screen. The kit includes a 7 four-wire resistive touch screen and a PICkit Serial Analyzer. The development board has 4-, 5-, and 8-wire headers to connect to a touch screen for testing, and the kit includes adapter cables to support the various pinouts common for resistive touch screens.

I will be completing these projects on my own equipment to ensure the effort is based on a realistic out of the box experience. I look forward to sharing my experience and thoughts about these two development kits in follow up posts in the near future.

Which touch development kit would you like me to work with after the Microchip effort? Please continue to suggest vendors and development kits you would like me to explore in this series by posting here or emailing me at Embedded Insights.

Tags: Touch Screens

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 12:04 pm and is filed under User Interfaces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.