Automotive-qualified capacitive touch controllers

EDN Europe, 04 Mar 2010

At this week’s Embedded World event, Atmel announced an automotive-qualified version of its Q-Touch product line; AT42QT1110 is an 11-key capacitive touch controller that meets all device specification requirements for the automotive industry. You might use them in a car’s centre-console; existing features of the range transfer to the automotive parts, including the capability to implement proximity sensing and fast system wakeup, so that a panel can become ‘live’ as a hand or finger approaches it, ready for individual keys to respond. The chips have on-board EEPROM for configuration storage, and come in two package variants; 5x5mm QFN-32 and 7x7mm TQFP-32. Other features in common with previous parts include spread-spectrum clocking, and automatic calibration at power-up, with drift compensation during operation.
Atmel achieved this qualification by developing these products in a facility that is fully compliant with the ISO-TS-16949 and QS-9000 standards. The firmware is written according to the Motor Industry Software Reliability Association C (MISRA C) standard and qualified according to the AEC-Q100 (Automotive Electronic Council) standard. Operation is from -40 to +125C. Prices start at $1.17 for 10K quantities.