CapTIvate capacitive touch sensing microcontrollers

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CapTIvate capacitive touch sensing microcontrollers [Copy link]

Industrial designs are evolving faster than ever to provide beautiful and reliable human-machine interfaces (HMIs), especially in home appliances and building security systems. Mechanical buttons and knobs are giving way to capacitive touch, and Texas Instruments' CapTIvate capacitive touch sensing microcontrollers (MCUs) are leading this user experience revolution. The new MSP430FR2675 and MSP430FR2676 devices will help expand your designs with capacitive touch while saving time, board space, and thus cost savings.
As shown in the figure below, the MSP430FR2675 and MSP430FR2676 offer 32KB and 64KB of non-volatile memory, giving you more code space to run application code or store/log data. Higher pin count packages, including 32-pin VQFN, 40-pin LQFP, and 48-pin LQFP, provide enough serial communication ports and GPIOs to connect with other system components. If you want to connect with analog sensors, the integrated 12-bit ADC can meet your needs. Why rely on a two-chip (host microcontroller + discrete capacitive touch microcontroller) solution? Designers can save BOM cost and board space by leveraging the CapTIvate capacitive touch sensing microcontroller single-chip solution.

The MSP430FR267x is an ultra-low-power MSP430 microcontroller for capacitive touch sensing featuring CapTIvate touch technology for buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity applications. MSP430 MCUs with CapTIvate technology offer the most integrated and autonomous capacitive touch solutions on the market, with high reliability and noise immunity, and lowest power consumption. TI's capacitive touch technology supports the use of both self-capacitive and mutual-capacitive electrodes in the same design, maximizing flexibility. MSP430 MCUs with CapTIvate technology can penetrate thick glass, plastic, metal and wood, and operate in harsh environments, including wet, greasy and dirty environments.

TI capacitive touch sensing MSP430 MCUs are supported by an ecosystem of software and hardware resources, with reference designs and code examples to help you quickly start your design. Development kits include the MSP-CAPT-FR2633 CapTIvate technology development kit. TI also provides free software such as the CapTIvate Design Center, where engineers can quickly develop applications with an easy-to-use GUI and MSP430Ware software, as well as complete documentation including the CapTIvate Technology Guide.

The TI MSP430 family of low-power microcontrollers includes a variety of devices equipped with different peripheral sets to meet the needs of various applications. The architecture, combined with multiple low-power modes, is optimized to extend battery life in portable measurement applications. The MCU has a powerful 16-bit reduced instruction set (RISC) CPU that uses 16-bit registers and constant generators for maximum coding efficiency. The digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) allows the MCU to wake up from low-power mode to active mode in less than 10s (typical).

For a complete module description, see the MSP430FR4xx and MSP430FR2xx Family Device User's Guide.

• CapTIvate Technology – Capacitive Touch
  • performance
    • Four-way synchronous fast electrode scanning
    • Proximity Sensing
  • reliability
    • Improved immunity to power line, RF, and other environmental noise
    • Built-in spread spectrum, automatic tuning, noise filtering and de-jittering algorithms
    • Enables a reliable touch solution with 10V RMS common mode noise, 4kV electrical fast transients, and 15kV electrostatic discharge in compliance with IEC61000-4-6, IEC-61000-4-4, and IEC61000-4-2 standards
    • Reduced RF radiation and simplified electrical design
    • Support metal touch and waterproof design
  • flexibility
    • Up to 16 self-capacitive electrodes and 64 mutual-capacitive electrodes
    • Mixing self-capacitive and mutual-capacitive electrodes in the same design
    • Support multi-touch function
    • Wide capacitance detection range; 0 to 300pF wide electrode range
  • Low power consumption
    • Less than 5A wake-on-touch current for four sensors
    • Touch wake-up state machine supports electrode scanning during CPU sleep
    • Hardware acceleration for ambient compensation, filtering, and threshold detection
  • Easy to use
    • CapTIvate Design Center PC GUI allows engineers to design and debug capacitive buttons in real time without writing code
    • CapTIvate software library stored in ROM provides ample FRAM for customer applications
• Embedded Microcontroller
  • 16-bit RISC architecture
  • Supports clock frequencies up to 16MHz
  • Wide supply voltage range from 3.6V to 1.8V (minimum supply voltage is limited by SVS level, see SVS specifications)
• Optimized ultra-low power mode
  • Active mode: 135A/MHz (typical)
  • Standby: wake-up touch current consumption of four sensors is less than 5A
  • Shutdown (LPM4.5): 37nA, without SVS
• Low-power Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM)
  • Up to 64KB of non-volatile memory
  • Built-in Error Correction Code (ECC)
  • Configurable write protection
  • Unified storage for programs, constants, and storage
  • Write endurance up to 1015 times
  • Radiation resistant and non-magnetic
• Intelligent digital peripherals
  • Four 16-bit timers, each with three capture/compare registers (Timer_A3)
  • One 16-bit timer with 7 capture/compare registers per timer (Timer_B7)
  • One 16-bit timer with CapTIvate technology
  • One 16-bit RTC used as a counter only
  • 16-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC)
• Enhanced serial communication, supporting pin remapping function
  • Two eUSCI_A interfaces, supporting UART, IrDA and SPI
  • Two eUSCI_B interfaces, supporting SPI and I2C
• High-performance simulation
  • Up to 12 channels of 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
    • Internal Shared Reference (1.5V, 2.0V, or 2.5V)
    • Sample and hold 200ksps
  • One enhanced comparator (eCOMP)
    • Integrated 6-bit DAC as reference voltage
    • Programmable hysteresis
    • Configurable high-power and low-power modes
• Clock System (CS)
  • On-chip 32kHz RC oscillator (REFO) (with 1A support)
  • On-chip 16MHz Digitally Controlled Oscillator (DCO) with Frequency Locked Loop (FLL)
    • ±1% Accuracy at Room Temperature (With On-Chip Reference)
  • On-chip 10kHz Very Low Frequency Oscillator (VLO)
  • On-chip high frequency modulation oscillator (MODOSC)
  • External 32kHz crystal (LFXT)
  • Programmable MCLK prescaler (1 to 128)
  • SMCLK derived from MCLK via a programmable prescaler (1, 2, 4, or 8)
• General Purpose I/O and Pin Functions
  • 43 I/Os on LQFP-48 package
  • 43 interrupt pins on all GPIOs can wake up the MCU from low power modes
• Development Tools and Software
  • Development Tools
    • MSP CapTIvate MCU Development Kit Evaluation: Use the CAPTIVATE-PGMR programmer and the MSP CapTIvate MCU Development Kit evaluation model CAPTIVATE-FR2676
    • Target development board MSPTS430PT48A
  • Easy-to-use ecosystem
    • CapTIvate Design Center – code generation, customizable GUI, real-time tuning
• 16KB ROM library including CapTIvate touch program library and driver library
• Family Members (See also Device Comparison)
  • MSP430FR2676: 64KB program FRAM, 512B information FRAM, 8KB RAM
    , supports up to 16 self-capacitive sensors and 64 mutual-capacitive sensors
  • MSP430FR2675: 32KB program FRAM, 512B information FRAM, 6KB RAM
    , supports up to 16 self-capacitive sensors and 64 mutual-capacitive sensors
• Package Options
  • 48 pins: LQFP (PT)
  • 40-pin: VQFN (RHA)
  • 32-pin: VQFN (RHB)

Capacitive Touch Design Flow for MSP430 MCUs with CapTIvate Technology

Capacitive touch MSP430FR2676 MCU motherboard

Capacitive Touch Self-Capacitance Buttons, Sliders, Wheels, and Proximity Sensor Demo Board

MSP430FR2675 - Functional Block Diagram

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There are quite a few kits provided for development.