Atmel Launches World's Lowest Power Capacitive Touch Solution

New QTouch Solution for Atmel | SMART Microcontroller Portfolio

Enables Designers to Bring Their Ultra-Low Power Capacitive Touch Surface Designs Quickly to Market

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Dec 17, 2014, 08:00 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a leader in microcontroller (MCU) and capacitive touch solutions, today announced the new QTouch® Surface platform for capacitive touch-enabled user interfaces. The new QTouch Surface platform builds on the market-proven QTouch capacitive touch button sensing technology supported by Atmel | SMART MCUs. The new solution includes an on-chip peripheral touch controller (PTC), the cornerstone technology that enables higher performance capacitive touch on Atmel MCUs. Consuming less than 4µA, the QTouch Surface technology is perfect for wearables and other battery-powered applications that require a capacitive touch user interface.

"User interfaces in consumer products such as wearable/IoT devices, remote controls and PC/gaming controls are being driven by the massive adoption of touchscreens in smart phones and tablets," said Geir Kjosavik, Director of QTouch Product Marketing, Atmel Corporation. "Products in this new category require a surface solution with lower power consumption and higher cost optimization that do not require the performance from higher-end touchscreen controllers. The QTouch Surface platform is the ideal solution to support all these requirements."

The QTouch Surface solution uses only a fraction of the resources in Atmel | SMART MCUs and can be implemented with virtually zero cost since one Atmel controller can be used for both the application and capacitive touch user interface. A demonstration of the new QTouch Surface platform will be available at CES January 2015 in Atmel's booth # MP25760 in the South Hall of the LVCC. The QTouch Surface platform, including the QTouch Surface library firmware, software development tool and plug-and-play hardware kits, will be showcased at Embedded World held in Nuremberg, Germany on February 24, 2015.

Key features of the QTouch Surface Platform include:

World's lowest power capacitive touch surface control with a wake-up on a surface touch from a standby current down to 4µA
Works with all Atmel | SMART MCUs featuring the Peripheral Touch Control using less than 10% CPU processing power
Supports multi touch on the following surface size ranges
- 2.7" with 2mm touch separation (edge to edge)
- 5.5" with 14mm touch separation (edge to edge)
Scan rates up to 100Hz

Availability and Tools

To help accelerate a designer's development, the QTouch Surface Platform offers easy-to-use software and hardware tools.

QTouch Surface Library and QTouch Composer support for QTouch Surface will be available free of charge in the Atmel Gallery.
Xplained Pro, Atmel's hardware development platform, will support the QTouch Surface Platform.

All development tools will be launched and available February 24, 2015 at Embedded World in Nuremberg.

More Information
Atmel Touch Solutions: http://www.atmel.com/technologies/touch/default.aspx
Atmel Touch on MCUs: http://www.atmel.com/Technologies/touch/touch-on-microcontrollers/default.aspx
Atmel Touch Surfaces: http://www.atmel.com/Technologies/touch/touch-on-microcontrollers/touch-surface.aspx
Embedded Design Blog: www.atmelcorporation.wordpress.com
Atmel YouTube Channel at www.atmel.com/youtube
Twitter: www.atmel.com/twitter
Facebook: www.atmel.com/facebook
Linked In: www.atmel.com/linkedin

About Atmel
Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with intelligent and connected solutions focused on the industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.

© 2014 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel^®, Atmel logo and combinations thereof, AVR®, QTouch®, and others are registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. ARM® and Cortex® are registered trademarks of ARM Ltd. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Press Contact:
Atmel
Agnes Toan, Sr. Communications Manager
Tel: (+1) 408-487-2963
[email protected]

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SOURCE Atmel Corporation