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Microchip adds MTCH2120 to its touch controller portfolio

Turnkey touch controllers are a fast and easy way to upgrade from mechanical buttons to modern touch buttons or displays.

The MTCH2120 touch controller Credit: Microchip

Microchip has announced the launch of a 12-button MTCH2120 touch controller, providing designers with a straightforward pathway for implementing touch button capabilities on user interfaces.

The low-power, water-tolerant turnkey touch device is integrated with Microchip’s unified ecosystem, allowing for an easier design process and facilitating transitions between other turnkey solutions and MCU-based touch implementations.

The MTCH2120 is the first of what will be a family of I2C-based touch controllers with a comprehensive design-in ecosystem.

The MTCH2120 provides a robust touch experience independent of noise events and moisture, while offering high flexibility to adapt to individual product requirements. Low-power features allow buttons to be grouped, which reduces scan activity and lowers power while enabling the buttons to remain fully operational.

The MTCH2120’s features and ecosystem include:

  • Easy Tune feature that automatically adjusts sensitivity and filters levels based on real-time noise assessment, removing the need for cumbersome threshold tuning
  • An MPLAB Harmony Host Code Configurator plug-in that removes the need to implement the I2C protocol on the host and allows for a straightforward connection to Microchip MCUs and MPUs
  • Design validation via MPLAB Data Visualizer
  • I2C port expander capabilities
  • Access to, and compatibility with, Microchip’s touch library, reducing the need for complex software engineering and firmware handling by the designer, helping reduce design cycles
  • The MTCH2120 evaluation board, which comes with a SAM C21 host MCU on board for out-of-the box integration into prototypes

The MTCH2120 is the first in Microchip’s MTCH family to incorporate I2C, with the recently released MTCH1010, MTCH1030 and MTCH1060 offering the same robust touch performance and an uncomplicated GPIO interface.

The MTCH2XXX family will add more solutions with bus-controlled flexibility, making the ease of use provided by the design-in ecosystem available to additional markets.