LOW POWER CAPSENSE BASED WIRELESS TOUCHPAD

PRADEEP KUMAR M.S.

Asst.professor, Dept. Of TCE, Don Bosco Institute of Technology College, Bangalore, India.
Email ID: Psa_reddy@yahoo.co.in,

SHARANABASAPPA
Asst.professor, Dept. Of ECE, Don Bosco Institute of Technology College, Bangalore, India.
Email ID:sharan.k12@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This project has two parts, namely wireless keyboard and the wireless receiver. The
keyboard is designed using the low power MSP430 controller to read the CapSense keys present
on the keyboard. The CapSense is basically a capacitive touch sensitive keys which are sensed by
the rate of change in capacitance on the keys when keys are pressed. The change in capacitance is
measured by the MSP430 controller and then the key pressed is sent to the remote device through
the wireless technology. This wireless technology may include Bluetooth, zigbee or RF wireless.

KEYWORDS: MSP-430,Bluetooth,Capsense etc

INTRODUCTION

The development in the communication technology has replaced the use of electrical conductors to
carry signals. These electrical conductors such as wires are considered to be an expensive and
complicated way of establishing network. The frequent use of wireless technology has helped to
transform many networks from the wired mode to wireless setup such as wireless LAN network.
Wireless network has established using much wireless technology, most commonly ZigBee
technology or a Bluetooth technology.

In electro-mechanical keypad there is a force being applied and delay is encountered. In order to
overcome these parameters we are proposed to develop touchpad using CapSense technology.
CapSense touch pad is used to detect presence and absence of conductive material. Signal taken
from the CapSense touch-pad is fed into the MSP430 microcontroller. One of the main features of
MSP430 is that it has capacitive touch enabled I/O pins. It processes the received signal and
displays the character on the display.

Cypresss CapSense controllers use changes in capacitance to detect the presence of a finger on or
near a touch surface. This touch button example illustrates a capacitive sensor replacing a
mechanical button. The sensing function is achieved using a combination of hardware and
firmware. The following section provides an overview of capacitive sensing technology and
CapSense solutions.

CapSense solutions detect the presence or absence of a conductive object (such as a finger) by
measuring changes in capacitance. This technology lends itself equally well to buttons, sliders,
switches, touchpads, touch screens, and proximity sensors, taking industrial design possibilities to
a much higher level.
CAPSENSE SENSING TECHNOLOGY

Sensing Methods
There are a number of capacitive sensing methods currently in use across the electronics industry.
Some of them include:

Charge Transfer
The change in sensor capacitance, introduced by a finger touch, modifies the charge transfer
between the sensor capacitor and the reference capacitor. These incremental charge packets are
transferred until a reference voltage is achieved on the reference capacitor, which indicates the
presence of a touch.

Relaxation Oscillator
A sensor capacitor is used to set its frequency directly. The capacitance introduced by the finger
touch is detected on the sensor by tracking the change in the frequency of the oscillator. When
there is a finger touch, the sensor capacitor increases and frequency of the oscillator decreases.

TX-RX
A source waveform is driven on the TX end of a mutual-capacitance system and senses the
response on the RX end. The received signal reflects changes in sensor capacitance.

ADC
A current source generates a linear voltage ramp on a capacitor. This voltage is input to an analog
comparator circuit. The comparators output is monitored and a counter increments whenever it
transitions from high to low.

BLOCK DIAGRAM

This block diagram has two parts:

A wireless keyboard
A wireless receiver.
The keyboard is designed using low power MSP430 controller to read the CapSense key
pressed.

CapSense technology detects the presence or absence of a conductive object (such as a finger) by
measuring changes in capacitance. This technology lends itself equally well to buttons, sliders,

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switches, touchpads, touch screens, and proximity sensors, taking industrial design possibilities to
a much higher level.

When a key is pressed change in capacitance is observed due to change in dielectric medium.
Capacitance change is measured by MSP430 and information is sent to a remote device through a
wireless technology (ZigBee).
MSP430 in general is known as TIMSP430
TI Texas Instrument
MSP Mixed Signal Microcontroller/Processor.
It is a 16 bit controller specially designed for low cost and low power consumption embedded
applications.MSP430 uses 6 different low power modes which can disable unwanted clock and
CPU time. Also capable of having wake-up time below 1s and allow microcontroller to stay in
sleep mode (0.7A) longer and hence minimizing average current consumption.

All MSP430 devices have JTAG interface for de-bugging, program development and flash
programming only. The JTAG consists of a shift register with a flip flop connected to each pin.
The values on the pins can be loaded all at once into the shift register and read out serially through
JTAG.

It is a specification suit for high level communication protocols used to create WPAN.It is based
on IEEE 802.15 Standard. The range is10 to 20m and can be extended to miles using extenders.
IEEE 802.15 Standard specifies a physical layer and MAC (Media Access Control) layer for low
rate Wireless PAN.

The ZigBee Alliance has developed very low-cost, very low-power consumption, two-way,
wireless communications standard. Solutions adopting the ZigBee standard will be embedded in
consumer electronics, home and building automation, industrial controls, PC peripherals, medical
sensor applications, toys and games.

The ZigBee stack architecture is made up of a set of blocks called layers. Each layer performs a
specific set of services for the layer above. A data entity provides data transmission service and a
management entity provides all other services.

The kit is designed in such way that all the possible features of the microcontroller will be easily
used by the students. The kit supports in system programming (ISP) which is done through serial
port. NXPs 8051 (89V51RD2), 8051 Primer Kit is proposed to smooth the progress of developing
and debugging of various designs encompassing of High speed 32-bit Microcontrollers.

To interface the ZigBee module with 8051 Primer Board for accessing the mobiles without wires
through UART0. The data communication is done in internet by using the ZigBee module through
MAX232 into the SBUF register of 8051 microcontroller (refer serial interfacing with 8051). The
serial data from the Zigbee receiver is taken by using the Serial Interrupt of the controller. +5V
and ground is connected to provide power to the module. While TX and RX pin is connected for
communication.

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen is an electronic display module ad find a wide range of
applications. A 16x2 LCD display is very basic module and is very commonly used in various
devices and circuits. These modules are preferred over seven segments and other multi segment

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LEDs. The reasons being: LCDs are economical; easily programmable; have no limitation of
displaying special & even custom characters (unlike in seven segments), animations and so on. A
16x2 LCD means it can display 16 characters per line and there are 2 such lines. In this LCD each
character is displayed in 5x7 pixel matrix. This LCD has two registers, namely, Command and
Data.The command register stores the command instructions given to the LCD. A command is an
instruction given to LCD to do a predefined task like initializing it, clearing its screen, setting the
cursor position, controlling display etc. The data register stores the data to be displayed on the
LCD. The data is the ASCII value of the character to be displayed on the LCD.

SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION

Serial communication occurs in either synchronous or asynchronous format. In synchronous

transmission a receiver and a transmitter are synchronized and a block of character is transmitted
along with the synchronization transmission while asynchronous transmission is character
oriented, means each character carries start and stop bits. Asynchronous transmission is used for
high speed transmission (more than 20kbps) while asynchronous is generally used in low speed
transmission (less than 20kbps).

In simplex transmission data flows only in one direction while in case of duplex transmission data
flows in both the direction. In duplex transmission if the transmission is only in one direction at a
time then it is called half-duplex, if transmission is in both directions then it is called full-duplex.

INTERFACING

The keyboard here we are interfacing is a matrix keyboard. This keyboard is designed with a
particular rows and columns. These rows and columns are connected to the microcontroller
through its ports of the microcontroller 8051. We normally use 16x2 matrix keyboard, so only two
ports of 8051 can be easily connected to the rows and columns of the keyboard.

Once we are sure that one of key in the keyboard is pressed, next our aim is to identify that key. To
do this we firstly check for particular row and then we check the corresponding column of the
keyboard. To check the row of the pressed key in the keyboard, one of the rows is made high by
making one of the bits in the output port of 8051 high. This is done until the row is found out.
Once we get the row next out, our job is to find out the column of the pressed key. The column is
detected by the contents in the input ports with the help of a counter. The content of the input port
is rotated with carry until the carry bit is set.

The contents of the counter is then compared and displayed in the display. This display is designed
using a seven segment display and a BCD to seven segment decoder IC 7447. The BCD equivalent
number of counter is sent through output port of 8051 displays the number of pressed key.
Whenever a key is pressed, a row a column gets shorted, through that pressed key and all the other
keys are left open.

ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES AND APPLICATIONS

Advantages:
High Sensitivity.
Low Power consumption.

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 No Switch debouncing.
Long life.
More efficiency.

Disadvantages:
Poor sensitivity in cold conditions.
Cant sense the nail.

Applications:

ATM keypads.
Airport check-in.
Smart phones, Tablets and Video games.
Elevator switches.
Remotes.

CONCLUSION

The touch screen interface is easier to use than other input devices. It is useful to make information
more accessible by allowing user to navigate by simply touching the display.

FUTURE SCOPE

Today touch screens has become adapted by computer users of all abilities because it is simple fast
and innovative. In future there is no usage of mouse and keyboards as they will be replaced by
touch screens.

Touch screens will assist for PDAs, making those devices more useful. In future the estimates for
the touch keyboards will cross 362.7 million units.

REFERENCES

REN F Y,HUANG H N, LIN C, wireless sensor networks, Journal of software, 14(7),

pp.1282-1291,2003.
LANMAN Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society, Wireless LAN medium access
control(MAC) and physical layer(PHY) Specification, IEEE, New York, NY, USA,IEEE Std
802.11-1997 Edition, 1997.
SICHER A, Emerging Technologies Symposium: Broadband, Wireless Internet Access, 2000
IEEE
Robert E Marin, Roger K Simonson, Capacitive Keyswitch Sensor and Method US Patent
#3931610, 1976
Application note AN2233a, Capacitive Switch Scan, Cypress semiconductor
Application Note AN2360 Power consumption and sleep Considerations with Capsense,
Cypress Semiconductor
Application note AN2318, Design Considerations for Capsense Applications Cypress
Semiconductor

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