Microchip Technology Offers New Capacitive Touch Demo Board; Simplifies Integration of Cap–Touch Interfaces In

Microchip Technology Offers New Capacitive Touch Demo Board; Simplifies Integration of Cap–Touch Interfaces Into 16-bit MCUs

PICDEM Touch Sense 2 Board Features mTouch Sensing Solution Software and 16-bit PIC24FJ256GB110 MCU With Integrated Capacitive-Touch CTMU Peripheral

CHANDLER, Ariz., Sep. 8, 2008 [NASDAQ: MCHP] — Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, today announced an addition to its mTouch capacitive touch offerings, the PICDEM Touch Sense 2 Demo Board (Part # DM164128). The easy-to-use board comes with the updated, royalty-free mTouch Sensing Solution Software Development Kit (SDK) and is populated with a 16-bit PIC24FJ256GB110 microcontroller (MCU), which features an integrated Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU) peripheral for fast capacitive touch sensing. This is also the world’s first 16-bit MCU family with USB On-The-Go (OTG). The board and supporting materials provide a complete platform for implementing capacitive touch-sensing interfaces, without the need for external components. Additionally, with the PIC24FJ256GB110 family’s rich peripheral integration and 256 Kbytes of Flash memory, and Microchip’s broad portfolio of free and low-cost software libraries, embedded designers can use a single MCU to cost effectively implement a wide variety of additional user-interface functions, including QVGA touch-screen displays, speech-based audio prompts and USB connectivity.

Many applications in the consumer, appliance, medical, industrial and automotive markets are rapidly adopting capacitive touch-sensing technology for reasons such as aesthetics, maintenance, cost and cleanliness. Expanding on Microchip’s existing 8-bit PIC® microcontroller-based mTouch development tools for capacitive touch, the PICDEM Touch Sense 2 Demo Board enables designers to implement this leading-edge user interface with Microchip’s wide portfolio of 16-bit PIC24F MCUs. Equipped with capacitive touch-sensing keys and sliders, the board allows designers to evaluate this interface in their applications using the Windows-based mTouch Diagnostic Tool, an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) that is included in the mTouch Sensing Solution SDK. The software libraries, source code and other support materials that come with the board further shorten development time and reduce design costs.

“Microchip continues to be committed to making it easy and inexpensive for engineers to implement capacitive touch-sensing interfaces into their designs,” said Mitch Obolsky, vice president of Microchip’s Advanced Microcontroller Architecture Division. “With this new demonstration board, we are enabling designers to take advantage of the cost-effective, feature-rich and low-power PIC24F 16-bit microcontroller family in their capacitive-touch applications.”

Board Pricing & Availability

The PICDEM Touch Sense 2 demo board (Part # DM164128) can be purchased today at http://www.microchipdirect.com, for $99.99. This price includes the mTouch Sensing Solution SDK and a USB cable. For further information, contact any Microchip sales representative or authorized worldwide distributor, or visit http://www.microchip.com/mtouch.

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About Microchip Technology

Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHP) is a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, providing low-risk product development, lower total system cost and faster time to market for thousands of diverse customer applications worldwide. Headquartered in Chandler, Ariz., Microchip offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. For more information, visit the Microchip website at http://www.microchip.com.

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