Microchip Announces the Industry’s First Development Kit for Integrated 2D Projected Capacitive Touch (PCAP) and 3D Gestures on Displays

Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHP), a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, today announced the industry’s first development kit for integrated 2D projective capacitive touch (PCAP) and 3D gesture recognition on displays – the 2D/3D Touch and Gesture Development Kit (DV102014). The kit will provide designers easy access to Microchip’s patented 2D and 3D GestIC^® sensing technology, allowing them to easily integrate 2D multi-touch and 3D hand gesture recognition into their display applications. The use of electric-field based technology enables hand and finger gestures to now be tracked both on the display surface as well as above at a distance of up to 20 cm. In addition, the development kit provides an easy-to-use, “out-of-the-box” experience that requires no code development.  Parameterization, diagnostics and optional settings are done through Aurea 2.0, a free downloadable graphical user interface (GUI). 

The 2D/3D Touch and Gesture Development Kit features Microchip’s latest PCAP controller, MTCH6303, with the MGC3130 3D gesture controller. It includes an eight-inch transparent touch sensor to enable rapid prototyping for widely available displays. The MTCH6303 provides multi-touch coordinates with a five-finger scan rate of 100 Hz. In addition, it has an integrated multi-finger surface gesture suite which makes it a good fit both for Operating System (OS) driven applications as well as embedded systems without an operating system.

The MGC3130 with Microchip’s award-winning GestIC technology was the first electrical-field-based 3D gesture controller to offer low-power, precise, and robust hand position tracking at 200 Hz. In addition, GestIC technology utilizes advanced Hidden Markov Models to ensure that the recognition rate for 3D hand gestures is above 95%. Free-space hand gestures are universal, hygienic and easy to learn, making them ideal for display applications.

“Microchip has been an industry leader in developing gesture-based technologies since the launch of GestIC,” said Dr. Roland Aubauer, director of Microchip’s Human-Machine Interface Division, “GestIC technology is a low complexity solution for adding 3D features to display applications that combine seamlessly with 2D PCAP multi-touch designs. Designers now have an easy way to combine 2D and 3D user interface technologies in order to build innovative and easy to use applications.”

To learn more about the 2D/3D Touch and Gesture Development Kit (DV102014), visit:https://www.microchip.com/DV102014-022316b