Microchip announces two new development tools for adding advanced human interfaces to PIC32, 32-bit microcontroller-based designs. The Multimedia Expansion Board enables development of interactive, graphics-based interfaces with network connectivity. The enhanced mTouch Capacitive Touch Evaluation Kit adds a new board for implementing capacitive touch sensing with the PIC32.

 The Multimedia Expansion Board demonstrates how to implement a flexible graphics display strategy that is not dependent on controller-based QVGA Display Modules, which are frequently made obsolete. It also includes a 24-bit stereo audio codec line out, headphone and microphone jacks, integrated FCC-certified Wi-Fi, an on-board 3-axis accelerometer and a 5-position joystick.

The mTouch Capacitive Touch Evaluation Kit includes a new board for development with the PIC32. It comes equipped with capacitive touch-sensing keys and sliders, which allows designers to evaluate this interface in their applications using the Windows OS-based mTouch Diagnostic Tool. This software tool provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for developing cap-touch buttons and sliders, and is included in the free MPLAB Integrated Development Environment.

Additional software libraries, source code and other support materials are available.