Electronica 2008 - Read our full show coverage from Munich
Microchip was telling visitors to its Electronica stand that it had added an inductive touch sensing capability to its technology portfolio and making the functionality available to customers via a free licence.
"We acquired the technology from a UK company which has given us an exclusive licence", Fanie Duvenhage, Microchip's director of marketing told Electronics Weekly on the company's Electronica stand.
Microchip already had resistive touch sensing technology and capacitive touch sensing technology so why did it need inductive touch sensing technology?
"Because it works on metal, it works well outdoors and when it's wet, and it works when you're wearing gloves", replied Duvenhage.
Microchip is giving customers free licences to the technology, plus the systems knowledge and hardware design to implement an inductive touch sensor in their products on condition that they use a PIC microcontroller for the application.
The function can be integrated within existing application code in a standard 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit PIC microcontroller or 16-bit dsPIC Digital Signal Controller.
Implementation details are available by a free download from http://www.microchip.com/touch
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