MSP CapTIvate
MCU Development Kit from TI
First impressions of this kit is that it exudes quality. A sturdy cardboard box is lined with high quality foam inserts. Each of the boards is wrapped in an anti-static bag, there are 6 in total. The boards are high quality too with small rubber feet, high spec connectors and a gloss black finish that would not be out of place on a top end stereo.
The boards in the kit are: the main MCU board, a programming adaptor, isolation board and three different sensor boards. These sensor boards are made from 2 PCBs sandwiched together. I've yet to determine if this is a requirement or just because TI wanted to provide a more robust test platform. The final part of the kit is a micro-USB cable.
| {gallery} CapTIvate Boards |
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MCU: The microcontroller board is mostly jumpers and a few discretes so designing with this should be straight forward |
Programmer: The programmer acts as a "HID" or Human Interaction device, this should remove the need for drivers on the PC |
Isolator: Ensure your circuit is electrically isolated for noise measurements |
Buttons and sliders: Linear and rotary sliders as well as 8 buttons, the design UI helps you set these up. |
Phone: A real world example in the form of a big desk phone. |
Proximity: A proximity and swiping demo |
The documentation is online and includes full schematics and PCB designs are available, as are all the code examples.
To use the kit a PC/Mac is required along with the CapTIvate Design Center GUI. To reprogramme the MCU a development environment is required, this software is all free to download.
http://www.ti.com/tool/msp-capt-fr2633
This was just a quick intro, the next part of the roadtest will be to look at the software and demos, then I plan to look at use with gloves and a variety of overlay materials.
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