For Embedded Markets Microchip announces the mTouch AR1000 Resistive Touch-Screen Controllers –embedded analogue resistive touch-screen controllers, adding to Microchip’s portfolio of mTouch capacitive and inductive touch-sensing solutions. By providing built-in decoding and advanced filtering, as well as controller-driven calibration, the AR1000 controllers lower costs and reduce time to market for any embedded resistive-touch design. Prior to the AR1000 controller, embedded systems implementing resistive-touch user interfaces were limited to basic ADCs that required extensive development and integration.

The AR1000 controllers eliminate this type of trial-and-error engineering by providing sophisticated, proprietary touch-screen decoding algorithms that enable applications to receive fully processed, reliable touch coordinates. Combining Microchip’s capabilities in microcontroller manufacturing with the recently acquired Hampshire Company’s 15+ years of experience designing resistive touch-screen controllers, the AR1000 controllers enable comfortable product development. Acceptance of finger, glove or stylus-pen inputs, and overall ease of manufacturing and integration, resistive touch-sensing technology is suitable for applications such as mobile phones, industrial automation, retail point-of-sale, gaming/entertainment, and automobile navigation systems.

The AR1000 controllers provide universal 4-, 5- and 8-wire support, as well as support for SPI, I2CTM and UART communication interfaces and are available in 20-pin QFN, SOIC and SSOP packages. Microchip also announced the mTouch AR1000 Development Kit, which provides everything designers need to get started using AR1000 controllers. The kit includes the AR1000 development board, a 7” four-wire resistive overlay, a PICkit™ Serial Analyzer and all necessary interface cables, as well as a CD containing technical documentation, GUI and all necessary software. The kit is priced at $99.99.