Atmel Expands QTouch Safety Platform For Home Appliance User Interfaces

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Atmel^® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a leader in microcontroller (MCU) and capacitive touch solutions, today announced the new QTouch^® safety platform for capacitive touch-enabled user interfaces in the home appliance market. The new QTouch safety platform adds mandatory safety and supports the Atmel | SMART ARM^® Cortex^®-M0+ based MCUs for safety critical home appliance applications.

The most recent QTouch capacitive touch platform is based on the Atmel | SMART SAM D20 integrating an on-chip peripheral touch controller (PTC) to deliver excellent EMC robustness, short response times and combines self- and mutual capacitance sensors for up to 256 channels. The QTouch platform has been widely adopted by the world's leading home appliance manufacturers.

With today's home appliance, designers are facing stringent certification requirements for safety and EMC robustness. Designers are looking for a platform that supports all the applicable safety standards required to pass end product qualification with minimal design time. Atmel's QTouch Safety Platform is pre-qualified for the VDE/UL 60730 Class B and UL 1998 certifications, reducing a designer's overall development time by as much as twelve months. Household appliance designers can now focus on more innovative, easy-to-use interfaces that support capacitive touch buttons, sliders and wheels on an Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex M0+-based MCU rather than focusing on safety certification features. The SAM D20 ARM-based Cortex M0+-based MCU is the first device to support the QTouch safety library. Support for future home appliance devices will be added as they become available.

Designers can download the QTouch Safety Library Firmware, FMEA library and QTouch Composer Development Software on an Atmel ARM Cortex M0+-based MCU. The QTouch Safety Library ensures excellent noise tolerance through dynamic hardware and firmware noise filtering through the IEC 61000-4-6 10V conducted immunity with minimal design effort. Additionally, QTouch Safety Platform provides FMEA support and moisture tolerance.

"With the increased regulations in Europe and the US for safer home appliance products, designers are looking for pre-qualified solutions that accelerate this part of the development cycle," said Geir Kjosavik, director of QTouch product marketing, Atmel Corporation. "Atmel's latest QTouch Safety Platform gives designers the pre-qualified features for their home appliances while enabling them to differentiate their products with capacitive touch interfaces in the form of buttons, wheels or sliders. We are excited to help bring more safety critical home appliances to market and are continuing to broaden our portfolio of devices to support the home appliance market."

Availability and Pricing

Atmel is shipping the SAM D20 in volume today. The SAM D20 is offered in 16KB to 256KB of Flash in 32-, 48- and 64-pin packages. Pricing starts at $1.02 USD for 1,000-piece quantities in the 16KB 32-pin QFN package.

Development Support

To help accelerate a designer's development, the QTouch Safety Platform offers easy-to-use software and hardware tools. The QTouch Safety Library and QTouch Composer is available free of charge in the Atmel Gallery.

The SAM D20 QTouch robustness demo is available in the Atmel Store for USD $149. The SAM D20 QTouch robustness demo provides an evaluation and demo highlighting the superior performance Atmel's QTouch Safety Platform. The kit comes pre-loaded with a pre-qualified 60730 Class B software that can be easily re-programmed and debugged using the embedded debugger. The kit passes all standard home appliance EMC tests.

In addition to the SAM D20 QTouch robustness demo, the QTouch Safety Platform can be explored using the Xplained Pro evaluation platform. The SAM D20 Xplained Pro evaluation board is available for USD $39, while the QT1 Xplained Pro adding QTouch support is available for USD $25. Both kits are available in the Atmel Store.

More Information
Atmel | Smart Family: http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/arm/default.aspx
Atmel QTouch: http://www.atmel.com/products/touchsolutions/touchsoftware/default.aspx
Embedded Design Blog: www.atmelcorporation.wordpress.com 
Atmel YouTube Channel at www.atmel.com/youtube 
Twitter: www.atmel.com/twitter
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Linked In: www.atmel.com/linkedin

About Atmel
Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with intelligent and connected solutions focused on the industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.

© 2014 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel^®, Atmel logo and combinations thereof, QTouch^® and others are registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. ARM^® and Cortex^® are registered trademarks of ARM Ltd. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

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Atmel
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