DM160218: 3D Capacitive Sensing, 2.5 ~ 3.465V in

The Hillstar Development Kit is designed to support an easy integration of Microchip’s MGC3130 3D Tracking and Gesture Controller into customer’s applications. It provides MGC3130 system setup, related hardware and software references.

With the MGC3130 Software Package, including Aurea Graphical User Interface and GestIC Library, the MGC3130 Software Development Kit (SDK) and PIC18 Host Reference code, design-in is easy in five steps.

The MGC3130 is the first product based on Microchip’s GestIC® technology. It is developed as a mixed-signal controller. The MGC3130 has one transmit and five very sensitive receive channels that are capable to detect changes of a transmitted electrical field (E-field) corresponding to capacitive changes in the femtofarad (1 fF = 10-15F) range.

In order to transmit and receive an electrical field, electrodes have to be connected to the transmitting and receiving channels of the MGC3130 controller. The spatial arrangement of the electrodes allows the chip to determine the center of gravity of the electric field distortion, and thus position tracking and gesture recognition of a user’s hand in the detection space.