Atmel Expands Touch Portfolio to Offer More Functionality to Everyday Applications

NUREMBERG, Germany, March 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EMBEDDED WORLD 2010 -- Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, today announced several new and existing device and software products that will enable designers to easily implement capacitive touch functionality to buttons, sliders and wheels for applications in the consumer, industrial and white goods markets.

Atmel uses its proprietary AVR capacitive touch microcontroller technology as a foundation for these products and offers a complete portfolio of devices and software for applications that require touch enabled buttons, sliders and wheels and touch screens. At Embedded World 2010, Atmel is introducing solutions that will enable designers to include touch functionality in existing and new applications. These introductions include:

• Atmel's low-power 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) ATtiny 10/20/40 family with optimized touch sensing support. Based on Atmel's high-performance AVR(R) MCU, these easy to design in products provide ultra-low cost solutions for embedded control and touch interface applications such as buttons, sliders and wheels. The high-performance RISC controller architecture of the ATtiny 10/20/40 include enough memory to support a wide range of requirements with excellent integration for cost-sensitive applications that require touch capability. In addition, these products have multiple communication options and low power operation. For more information about these products, please click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/attiny_touch.
• Atmel's enhanced QTouch Studio with added graphical design facilities. Designers can now develop low-power applications with touch functionality using any of Atmel's industry-leading AVR(R) microcontrollers. It has never been easier to design complete user interfaces with touch buttons, sliders and wheels. In addition, designers can develop designs with touch functionality for virtually any end product using any of Atmel's industry-leading AVR(R) microcontrollers. For more information on QTouch Studio, please click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/products/touchsoftware/qtouchsuite.asp?family_id=702
• Atmel's QTouch Suite with added functionality to provide third party CAD developers easy access to QTouch(R) technology. By offering Atmel's QTouch Suite with CAD software tools, designers will now have an easy approach to add touch buttons, sliders and wheels during schematics, printed circuit board (PCB) layout design and prototyping stage. In addition, designers can develop low-power applications with touch functionality using any of Atmel's industry-leading AVR(R) microcontrollers. For more information about these products, please click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/pressrelease/qtouch_cad.
• Atmel has joined forces with third-party CAD software company, Altium, to provide engineers an automated printed circuit board (PCB) layout capability in Altium's industry-leading CAD software, Altium Designer.
• A control reference design platform with 3D Accelerometer (3DA), capacitive touch sensing, and intuitive radio frequency (RF) lighting control developed by Atmel and i-Novi, a company with experience in the consumer and lighting market. This reference design is based on Atmel's ATmega128RFA1 RF single-chip, which includes a high-performance AVR(R) microcontroller with a best-in-class 2.4GHz RF transceiver in a single die, and is supported by Atmel's QMatrix(R) capacitive touch method. This easy-to-implement reference design includes a capacitive touch sensing-enabled RF remote control with Atmel's patented QTouch(R) capacitive touch technology for buttons, sliders and wheels so consumers can bring their products faster-to-market. Along with Atmel's ZigBee RF4CE-compliant software platform and i-Novi's expertise, this reference design will reduce a lighting designer's workflow. For more information about this new reference design, please click the following link: http://atmel.com/pressrelease/atmega128rfa1design.
• Atmel's family of single-key touch controllers for the portable device market with power consumption below 17 uA for next-generation portable touch devices, including power buttons, hearing devices, consumer toys and proximity sensors. The embedded low-power features in Atmel's new family of single-key touch controllers also enable longer battery life for these portable devices. To learn more about Atmel's single-key touch controllers, click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/products/bsw/default.asp.

More Information

To learn more about Atmel's touch solutions at Embedded World Nuremberg 2010, please click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/ew2010.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of capacitive touch solutions, microcontrollers, 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 complete system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets.

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