Microchip – Analogue resistive touch-screen controllers for embedded markets

Announced as the embedded industry’s most innovative analogue resistive touch-screen controllers, adding to Microchip’s comprehensive portfolio of mTouch capacitive and inductive touch-sensing solutions, the company has introduced the mTouch AR1000 resistive touch-screen controllers.

The AR1000 controllers further solidify Microchip’s position of having the broadest touch-controller product offering in the semiconductor industry. By providing built-in decoding and advanced filtering, as well as controller-driven calibration, the AR1000 controllers lower costs and reduce time to market for any embedded resistive-touch design.

Prior to the AR1000 controller, embedded systems implementing resistive-touch user interfaces were limited to basic ADCs that required extensive development and integration. The AR1000 controllers eliminate this type of trial-and-error engineering by providing sophisticated, proprietary touch-screen decoding algorithms that enable applications to receive fully processed, reliable touch coordinates. Combining Microchip’s capabilities in microcontroller manufacturing with the recently acquired Hampshire Company’s 15+ years of experience designing resistive touch-screen controllers, the AR1000 controllers enable low-risk product development, lower total system cost and shorter time to market for embedded resistive-touch designs. Popular due to its low cost, acceptance of finger, glove or stylus-pen inputs, and overall ease of manufacturing and integration, resistive touch-sensing technology is suitable for applications such as mobile phones, industrial automation, retail point-of-sale, gaming/entertainment, and automobile navigation systems.

The AR1000 controllers provide universal 4-, 5- and 8-wire support, as well as support for SPI, I2CTM and UART communication interfaces and are available in 20-pin QFN, SOIC and SSOP packages.

Microchip also announced the mTouch AR1000 Development Kit (part # DV102011), which provides everything designers need to get started using AR1000 controllers. The kit includes the AR1000 development board, a 7-inch four-wire resistive overlay, a PICkit Serial Analyzer and all necessary interface cables, as well as a CD containing technical documentation, GUI and all necessary software, says the company.