Writing for the EE Times, Max Maxfield notes that Atmel is a major player in the touchscreen tech arena, especially in the large format screen space. Indeed, Atmel boasts a wide range of ultra-low-power single-chip touchscreen controllers for screens ranging from 1.5 to 15.6 inches. Earlier this week, the company expanded its popular maXTouch T lineup of touchscreen controllers with the mXT106xT2 family of devices.
“These devices include the high-end touchscreen features associated with state-of-the-art smartphone-sized products, but they target the larger format market with products whose screens are in the 7- to 8.9-inch range,” Maxfield explains.
“The mXT1066T2 and mXT1068T2 controllers support both mutual-capacitance and self-capacitance sensing. By intelligently switching back and forth between the two and using a hybrid approach, designers can achieve optimal power consumption and noise immunity, even in high humidity and moisture environments, while supporting bare finger and gloved operation.”
As Maxfield points out, mXT1068T2 controllers also supports hover operation in which the user’s finger can be up to 20mm above the touch surface. Indeed, hover adds another dimension to the user-touchscreen interface by allowing the touchscreen to detect, track and interact with a floating finger without physical contact.
“Currently, only single-finger hover is supported, but one can easily imagine how useful this would be if using a tablet to read a recipe when one’s hands are covered in food. In the future, multi-fingered hover control might allow the user to ‘grab’ objects and rotate them,” says Maxfield.
“Hover is one element in an increasingly sophisticated realm of human-machine interfaces (HMIs) that also include gesture recognition. In the not-so-distant future, people will interact with electronic systems using a mixture of voice control, gesture recognition and touchscreens, including hover technology.”
Last, but certainly not least, Maxfield notes that the mXT106xT2 lineup features a peripheral touch controller (PTC) capability that enables capacitive sensing of up to 12 channels via a dedicated hardware block in the mXT chip.
The new devices in the maXTouch T Series are currently in production, with the 8.3” screen size evaluation kit slated to ship in May.
Interested in learning more about Atmel’s popular maXTouch T lineup of touchscreen controllers? You can check out the product’s official page here.
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