Touch sensor takes more inputs

Touch control IC can manage 16 different input buttons from one chip.

Omron has extended its capacitive touch control IC family with a new 16-channel version.

Omron's B6TS touch sensors allow a nonconducting surface of any shape to be used as a control giving a new dimension to the styling of consumer brown and white goods and AV equipment, as well as vending machines, lift controls and security access.

The newly added Omron B6TS-16 is able to manage 16 different input buttons from one chip and complements the existing four- and eight-channel versions.

Like the existing devices, the B6TS-16 is easy to integrate and highly tolerant of its working environment.

Features such as self-teaching, auto threshold and intelligent filtering simplify system design and improve performance.

B6TS compensates continuously for long term drift, to help ensure a long service life, and is designed to be tolerant of EMI.

In consumer electrical goods the controls are normally designed to match the cosmetic appearance of the unit.

The B6TS offers customers a great deal of freedom to build their own circuits around the sensor chip using their own defined electrode configuration.

Omron offers an evaluation kit called the T-SIS (touch sensor smart installation system) or "B6TWorkbench", allowing designers to experiment with user-definable settings to achieve desired sensing performance and accommodate anticipated environmental changes in the custom specific touch panel.

To minimise the cost of the finished system, cost-effective commercial single-sided PCB materials such as FR-2 or CEM-1 can be applied.

B6TS is suitable for use with almost all nonconducting materials such as plastic, rubber, glass, marble and wood.

It can also be used with ITO (indium-tin-oxide) and other clear materials to create back light touch keys for graphics and special lighting effects.

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