According to research company MarketsandMarkets, the overall Haptic Touchscreens market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 41% from 2013 to 2018. It is a key growth technology for distributors and semiconductor suppliers so Farnell element14 and Texas Instruments (TI) have created the HapTouch BoosterPack that allows developers to rapidly integrate haptics technology into their designs. It combines MSP430TCH5E haptics MCUs and TI’s DRV2603 haptic driver into a familiar game controller form factor.
The new haptics-enabled microcontrollers allow users to add vibrational feedback to all capacitive touch buttons, sliders and wheels on mobile computing and gaming devices, smart TV remotes, cameras, printers, industrial control panels, point-of-sale terminals and toys.
The new BoosterPack can be plugged into TI’s MSP430 Value Line LaunchPad evaluation kit to demonstrate the ease of configuring capacitive touch buttons that provide audio-to-haptics feedback.
The BoosterPack comes with a comprehensive software development kit. It is available from Newark element14 in North America, element14 in Asia Pacific and Farnell element14 in Europe.
David Adams, Senior Director of Technology Developent at Farnell element14, said: “The new HapTouch BoosterPack from TI and Farnell element14 allows developers to quickly design HMI in gaming, mobile and computer accessories, industrial control panels and consumer electronics. Farnell element14 has the industry’s largest selection of development kits to support all types of project design. Our continued investment in inventory means we are now also able to support in the low to mid volume production space as well.”
MSP430TCH5E MCUs allow developers to easily add and tune 122 different haptics effects, including effect chaining and audio-to-haptics functionality.
The MSP430TCH5E MCUs can be further configured with TI’s open source MSP430 Capacitive Touch Software Library. Developers can also leverage the new PC-based MSP430 Capacitive Touch Pro graphical user interface tool to evaluate, diagnose and tune capacitive touch button, slider and wheel designs in real time, featuring user-configurable ranging, recording and printing options.
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