Touchpad 5 Click as its foundation uses the IQS550, a projected capacitive touch and proximity trackpad/touchscreen controller from Azoteq. The IQS550 offers high sensitivity proximity wake-up and contact detection (touch) through many I2C-controllable sensor lines. Its advanced on-chip signal processing capabilities provide stable high performance with high sensitivity. Also, multiple filters are implemented to detect and suppress noise, track slow varying environmental conditions, and avoid the effects of possible drift. The IQS550 controller is very flexible, providing numerous outputs such as proximity, touch, snap, touch strength, area, and actual finger position, all in one solution.

On Click boards™ front side, a clearly defined field represents a touchpad area. This area is a matrix of conductive electrodes on the PCB, electrically isolated from each other, arranged as rows and columns of X and Y in a dimension of 29x23mm. An electrode consists of multiple diamond-shaped elements connected to the next with a conductive neck.

The controller uses the principle of projected capacitance charge transfer on the trackpad. When a conductive object such as a human finger approaches the sense pad, it will decrease the detected capacitance. Thresholds are applied to the sensor data to identify proximity and touch deviation areas. The contours of the touch areas are then translated to Cartesian position coordinates that are continuously monitored to recognize gestures. A user has access to all of the data layers – the raw sensor data, the sensor proximity/touch status data, the XY coordinates, and the gesture outputs.

Touchpad 5 Click communicates with MCU using the standard I2C 2-Wire interface with a maximum clock frequency of 400kHz, fully adjustable through software registers. An additional ready signal, routed on the INT pin of the mikroBUS™ socket, is added, which indicates when the communication window is available with new data for optimal response. Thus, it is optimal for the response rate to use the INT pin as a communication trigger. Alongside this pin, this Click board™ has a Reset feature routed to the RST pin on the mikroBUS™ socket, which with a low logic level, puts the module into a Reset state, and with a high level, operates the module normally.

This Click board™ can be operated only with a 3.3V logic voltage level. The board must perform appropriate logic voltage level conversion before using MCUs with different logic levels. However, the Click board™ comes equipped with a library containing functions and an example code that can be used, as a reference, for further development.

SPECIFICATIONS