Cypress Webcast on December 10 Teaches Capacitive Touch-Sensing Interface Design from Start to Finish

Free Online Seminar Presents Design Best Practices from Touch-Sensing Market Leader

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY) today announced a free, online seminar that gives a detailed overview of designing capacitive touch-sensing interfaces. The 60-minute webcast entitled “Capacitive Touch-Sensing Design Best Practices” will be presented in conjunction with EDN.com on Wednesday, December 10 at 9:00 a.m. PST.

Touch-sensing is changing the way humans interact with products such as cell phones, PCs, consumer electronics, white goods, and automotive systems. Understanding and incorporating design best practices are critical to adding elegant capacitive touch-sensing interfaces to any system. The webcast will present topics such as printed circuit board layout guidelines, signal-to-noise-ratio management, filtering techniques, water-tolerant techniques, and design-for-manufacture. The presenters leverage expertise gained via design with Cypress’s industry-leading CapSense™ touch-sensing solution. Interested parties can get more information and register at www.cypress.com/go/PR/CapacitveTouchwebcast."

“This webcast leverages years of capacitive touch-sensing expertise Cypress has accrued as the market leader,” said Geoff Charubin, vice president for Global Marketing at Cypress. “The presentation will show system designers the basics of replacing mechanical buttons and sliders with sleek, touch-sensing interfaces, as well as sophisticated techniques for efficient, effective designs.”

About CapSense
A single CapSense device can replace dozens of mechanical switches and controls with a simple, touch-sensitive interface. CapSense-based “button” and “slider” controls are more reliable than their mechanical counterparts because they are not prone to the environmental wear-and-tear that affects exposed buttons and switches. Cypress has garnered hundreds of CapSense design wins worldwide in applications that include mobile handsets, portable media players, white goods, computers, printers and automotive, among others.

Capacitive touch-sensing is fast becoming the solution of choice for front-panel display and media control applications. Increased durability, decreased bill of materials (BOM) and a clean, minimalist appearance make this elegant interface attractive to a wide range of designs. With Cypress’s CapSense interface, a finger on the interface forms an electrical connection with embedded sensors, which work with the PSoC device to translate data about the finger’s presence into various system control functions. The sensor itself is only a copper pad on the PCB, not an actual component.

Cypress’s CapSense solution offers system designers numerous advantages over capacitive sensing products built around modules and sub-assemblies, including increased flexibility, reduced board space and lower cost. Because of the unique PSoC architecture, designers can easily integrate multiple functions (e.g., LED drivers and LCD displays), in addition to capacitive sensing. The PSoC CapSense solution also delivers benefits such as easy communications using either I2C, SPI or USB interfaces, the ability to implement both touchpad (x-y matrix) and linear slider applications with the same device, and the ability to make quick design changes using the flash-based PSoC architecture. In addition, users can complete CapSense designs quickly and easily using pre-configured and verified “user modules” and experience real-time sensor tuning and monitoring within Cypress’s PSoC Designer™ Integrated Design Environment (IDE). Learn more about CapSense online at www.cypress.com/capsense.