Atmel expands QTouch security platform for home appliance user interface

The new product expands the Atmel | SMART capacitive touch button, slider and wheel combination.

This article refers to the address: http://

And can shorten the development cycle of safety-critical home appliances by up to 12 months.

Atmel®, a global leader in microcontroller (CCU) and capacitive touch technology solutions, today introduced the new QTouch® security platform for capacitive touch user interfaces in the appliance market. The platform adds mandatory security features and supports Atmel | SMART ARM® Cortex®-M0+-based MCUs for secure appliance applications.

The latest QTouch capacitive touch platform is based on the Atmel | SMART SAM D20 with an on-chip peripheral touch controller (PTC) for superior EMC performance and extremely short response times, and integrates self-capacitance and mutual capacitance sensors. Provides up to 256 channels. The QTouch platform has been widely adopted by many of the world's leading home appliance manufacturers.

Today's home appliance designers face stringent safety and EMC performance certification requirements. They are looking for a platform that supports all safety standards and allows them to pass the final product certification in the shortest possible time. Atmel's QTouch security platform is pre-certified with VDE/UL 60730 Class B and UL 1998, reducing designer development time by up to 12 months. Home appliance designers can now focus on developing more easy-to-use, innovative user interfaces with capacitive touch buttons, sliders and scroll wheels on Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex M0+-based MCUs without the need to focus on safety certification features . The ARM Cortex M0+-based SAM D20 MCU is the first MCU to support the QTouch security library and will add support for future home appliances.

Designers can download QTouch Secure Library firmware, FMEA libraries, and QTouch Composer development software to an ARM Cortex M0+-based Atmel MCU. The QTouch Safety Library minimizes design effort with dynamic hardware and firmware noise filtering and IEC 61000-4-6 10V conducted immunity to ensure superior noise immunity. In addition, the QTouch security platform also supports FMEA and is water resistant.

Geir Kjosavik, Director of Product Marketing at Atmel QTouch, said: "As Europe and the United States become more rigorous in their safety regulations for home appliances, designers are looking for pre-certified solutions that can shorten this part of the development cycle. Atmel's latest QTouch security The platform provides designers with pre-certified features and allows them to design differentiated products with capacitive touch interfaces in the form of buttons, scroll wheels or sliders. We are pleased to help customers bring safety-critical appliances to market. And we are continuing to expand our product portfolio for the home appliance market."

Product supply and pricing

Atmel is now shipping the SAM D20 in volume. The SAM D20 is available in 32, 48 and 64-pin packages with 16KB to 256KB of flash memory. The 16KB 32-pin QFN package starts at $1.02/piece (1,000 pieces).

Development support

To speed up the development of designers, the QTouch security platform provides easy-to-use hardware and software tools. The QTouch Security Library and QTouch Composer are available for free from Atmel Gallery.

The SAM D20 QTouch Reliability Demo is sold at the Atmel store for $149. The SAM D20 QTouch Reliability Demo Edition provides evaluation and demonstrations that highlight the superior performance of the Atmel QTouch security platform. The kit comes pre-loaded with pre-certified 60730 Class B software, which can be easily reprogrammed and debugged by the user using the embedded debugger. The kit has passed EMC testing of all household appliances.

In addition to using the SAM D20 QTouch Reliability Demo Edition, users can also evaluate the Touch Security Platform using the Xplained Pro evaluation platform. The SAM D20 Xplained Pro evaluation board is priced at $39, and the QTouch QT1 Xplained Pro is priced at $25. Both kits are available at the Atmel store.