With the goal of helping designers meet these functional safety requirements in touchscreen applications, Microchip Technology Inc. has announced its MXT336UD-MAUHA1 maXTouch® family of capacitive touchscreen controllers, the only pre-certified touchscreen controllers on the market with Class B firmware. The family consists of three controllers (MXT112UD-MAUHA1, MXT228UD-MAUHA1, and MXT336UD-MAUHA1) that cover the needs of different screen sizes between 2 and 8 inches.
Class B certified touch controllers offer unique safety features that allow the system to be shut down using an intuitive virtual button on a touchscreen, eliminating the need for an external safety-certified stop or cancel button and its associated microcontroller. They also enable the appliance to detect a touchscreen malfunction and automatically shut down using various self-diagnostic capabilities. For example, if the glass on a cooktop breaks, the touchscreen will go dark and the appliance will shut down, eliminating the risk of accidents in the home. With the continued growth in the number of touch-controlled appliances, the MXT336UD-MAUHA1 family facilitates compliance with the required safety functionality by integrating it into a single touchscreen interface, helping original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) reduce costs and improve time to market.
“The risk of fire caused by household appliances is forcing manufacturers of these devices to incorporate functional safety into their machines, and Microchip’s MXT336UD-MAUHA1 family of touchscreen controllers is already certified to the required safety standards,” said Fanie Duvenhage, vice president of Microchip’s human-machine interfaces business unit.
“Integrating Class B certification into our touchscreen controllers simplifies the design and homologation process for touch-controlled devices, prioritizing safety, reducing costs, and enabling solutions based on modern user interfaces.”.
Furthermore, this new family leverages a design with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and a proprietary mutual and differential acquisition technique. This allows the machine to reliably detect and track multiple fingers on surfaces exposed to moisture, water, and grease, among other things, even when the user is wearing gloves.
Development tools:
Software and hardware tools are available. Software tools include maXTouch Studio and maXTouch Analyzer, while an evaluation kit is available as a hardware tool.
