Cypress CapSense Express™ Touch Sensing Solution - Fast and Easy Replacement of Buttons and Sliders

Cypress introduced the new CapSense Express™ capacitive touch sensing solution. Based on proven CapSense Touch Sensing technology, it provides the industry's easiest and quickest way to replace mechanical buttons and sliders.

The PSoC Express™ tools enables designers to implement, monitor and tune up to 10 touch sensing buttons and/or sliders for optimal performance in real time using a graphical user interface – without any coding! This means reduced costs and fast time to market solutions.

Support for CapSense Express devices is provided in PSoC Express™ 3.0.

The software tool offers various drivers to handle the configuration of the six different CapSense Express™ devices:

The CapSense Express™ devices offer up to 10 IO´s, configurable (through specific commands sent to the I2C port) as either capacitive sensing elements (buttons / slider), or GPIOs, driving LEDs or interrupt signals, based on various IO conditions. The GPIOs are also configurable with interrupt for waking up the device from sleep.

For battery-powered applications, the devices offer low power consumption of just 1 mA active current and 2.6 µA in sleep mode. The new devices offer a wide operating voltage of 2.4V to 5.25V and an industrial temperature range of -40º C to +85º C. In addition, 2 Kb of Flash memory and an I2C communication interface are provided so designers can choose whether to store tuning values in Flash or load them over I2C at power-up.

There are three evaluation kits to appraise the advantages of CapSense Express™.

Button Evaluation Kits:

CY3218-CAPEXP1 uses the CY8C20110 device with 10 IO´s for three buttons, three backlight LEDs, three status LEDs, one mechanical button while CY3218-CAPEXP3 uses the CY8C20142 4 I/O device for two Capsense buttons and two status LEDs

Slider Evaluation Kit:

CY3218-CAPEXP2 uses the CY8C201A0 10 I/O device for a 5-segment slider with four status LEDs and 1 Mechanical button.

Cypress is the worldwide leader in capacitive sensing with the industry's broadest portfolio. Its PsoC™-based CapSense devices have implemented over 2.5 billion buttons, sliders and other touch sensing interfaces in working systems worldwide. The CapSense portfolio offers unmatched flexibility and integration, addressing a broad range of designs from complex, feature-rich applications to simple button replacement.

CapSense Express™ is the newest member in the industry's leading touch sensing solution family:

CapSense Express - Quick and easiest-to-use touch sensing

CapSense™ - Programmable touch sensing (Up to 25 programmable touch sensing interfaces including buttons, sliders, touchpads, and proximity sensing)
CapSense Plus - CapSense with additional functionality (Up to 46 touch sensing interfaces and analog/digital blocks configurable for Motor Control, Power Management, Gyro Sensing, etc.)