Silicon Labs is sampling capacitive sensing microcontrollers (MCUs) for human-machine interfaces (HMI).
The C8051F97x MCU is for Internet of Things, home/building automation, consumer and industrial markets.
It targets battery-powered and capacitive touch sensing applications for handheld industrial devices, toys, gaming machines and remote controls, as well as touch-panel switch replacements for white goods such as washers, dryers, ovens and dishwashers.
The MCUs draw 200 µA/MHz active current, a two-microsecond wake time and a sleep mode energy consumption of 55 nA with brownout detector enabled and 280 nA sleep current with a 16.4 kHz internal oscillator.
They incorporate Silicon Labs’ SAR charge-timing capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC) technology which has 40 microsecond acquisition time.
Silicon Labs’ CDC technology offers superior noise immunity for reliable performance in challenging conditions and configurations such as thick laminate overlays, electrical noise or variances in printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing.
This CDC hardware implementation is capable of measuring capacitance on a wide range of materials including PCBs, flex circuits, and indium tin oxide (ITO) on glass and film.
For more detail: Silicon Labs adds to capacitive sensing MCUs