Freescale software lets touch screens overcome water

Freescale capacitive touch panels and dev-board (via Freescale)

Freescale has been pioneering work in the semiconductor industry for more than 50 years now. Once a division of Motorola, Freescale delivered the world's first high powered germanium transistor used mostly for car radios. That started their streak of new and innovative inventions for years to come. Investing more than $780 million a year to research and development, Freescale has components in electronics we use nearly every day and all over the world. Their newest work improves upon their Xtrinsic touch-sensing software, allowing touchscreens to be able to work through drops or films of water.

The Xtrinsic 3.0 software builds on the highly successful TSS library. Along with the new water tolerance feature, it also includes noise detection and an algorithm to help reduce false touches. In order to accomplish such sensitive touch detection, the software combines extremely high sensitivity with a remarkably low capacitance measurement resolution. In addition, the users of the software are offered the choice of defining sensitivity themselves or letting the auto-sensitivity calibration do it for them based upon noise level analysis.

Since the new software is just an update it can easily be integrated into currently existing systems without increasing the system's cost. Furthermore, it also works with Freescale's touch-sensing input module, which can currently be found in many hardware platforms.  The software was designed for the medical, industrial, and auto infotainment applications to upgrade interfaces from mechanical to touch activated. However, if we can now waterproof the hardware under those touch screens, we may see a smart phone that could help the nearly 1 in 5 people who drop their phones into the toilet (according to a google study).

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