Combine MPR121 with PIC18F57Q43 and create any capacitive application you can think of

TouchClamp Click is based on the MPR121, a proximity capacitive touch sensor controller from NXP Semiconductors. The MPR121 uses seven electrodes/capacitance sensing inputs, four of which are multifunctional for LED driving (H, C, B, A) and GPIO. One electrode is an extra capacitive button in the middle of the board labeled H. It also features the 8th simulated electrode, which represents the simultaneous charging of all electrodes connected together. The MPR121 has integrated independent autocalibration and autoconfiguration for each electrode input and separate touch and release trip thresholds for each, providing hysteresis and electrode independence. The easiest way to experiment with TouchClamp click is to use wires with alligator clips. Let your imagination roam free when choosing conductive objects such as cans, fruit, jar lids, and more. The MPR121 chip has several features in addition that simplify development and integration. First, it applies three levels of digital filtering to the raw ADC data to remove high and low-frequency noise, ensuring that

the interrupts are properly registered in a broad range of applications. The auto-calibration function, according to the vendor's datasheet, "continually learns the background baseline capacitance of each individual electrode, so the system only has to program the amount of small change from these baselines that represents a touch or release." The auto-configuration uses the given target charge level so the chip can automatically run to get an optimized charge current and charge time setting for each electrode without knowing the specific capacitance value on the electrode input. The capacitance sensing uses a constant DC current capacitance sensing scheme and can measure capacitances ranging from 10pF to over 2000pF, with resolutions up to 0.01pF. The voltage measured on the input sensing node is inversely proportional to the capacitance and is sampled by an internal 10-bit ADC. The touch sensing compares the baseline value with the current immediate electrode data to determine if a touch or a release has occurred, with the ability to set a touch/release threshold.

The proximity sensing acts as the near proximity sensing system, where all electrodes can be summoned together to create a single large electrode, thus covering a much larger area. Touch sensing and proximity sensing can be used at the same time. Among 12 electrodes, eight of them can be used as a GPIO and can be used to drive LEDs or for GPIO. The TouchClamp Click uses an I2C 2-Wire interface to communicate with the host MCU. It also has an ADDR SEL jumper to choose between the two available I2C addresses and can be connected to VDD or VSS (VSS position set by default). In addition, the TouchClamp Click comes with an interrupt INT pin, which is triggered anytime a touch or release is detected. 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. Also, this Click board™ comes equipped with a library containing easy-to-use functions and an example code that can be used as a reference for further development.

PIC18F57Q43 Curiosity Nano evaluation kit is a cutting-edge hardware platform designed to evaluate microcontrollers within the PIC18-Q43 family. Central to its design is the inclusion of the powerful PIC18F57Q43 microcontroller (MCU), offering advanced functionalities and robust performance. Key features of this evaluation kit include a yellow user LED and a responsive

mechanical user switch, providing seamless interaction and testing. The provision for a 32.768kHz crystal footprint ensures precision timing capabilities. With an onboard debugger boasting a green power and status LED, programming and debugging become intuitive and efficient. Further enhancing its utility is the Virtual serial port (CDC) and a debug GPIO channel (DGI

GPIO), offering extensive connectivity options. Powered via USB, this kit boasts an adjustable target voltage feature facilitated by the MIC5353 LDO regulator, ensuring stable operation with an output voltage ranging from 1.8V to 5.1V, with a maximum output current of 500mA, subject to ambient temperature and voltage constraints.