Capacitive touch human-machine interfaces (HMIs) are becoming more common as a replacement for traditional mechanical button or keypad interfaces in products ranging from appliances to personal electronics . Capacitive touch interfaces enable products to be developed with sleeker designs, enhanced user experience, lower cost, and improved product reliability. Incorporating gesture software algorithms with a product's user interface can, for example, transform a simple capacitive touch wheel into a multi-function user interface with multiple tap zones and swipe or slide gestures for controlling various application functions or features. Choosing to incorporate gesture software algorithms with traditional capacitive touch sensors opens up new opportunities for product design flexibility and functionality.
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How a user interacts with the interface is driven by the software that creates a sensor's behavior. At a fundamental level, determining a finger touch or position is performed by the sensor's basic detection software or library driver. Tracking and processing how long a finger touches, how far the finger moves, and looking for one or more specific patterns requires a software algorithm that, in this context, is referred to as a gesture algorithm. The gesture software algorithms create new sensor interface behaviors described as tap, double tap, tap-hold, swipe, and slide.
This application note, along with the Gesture-Based Capacitive Touch Speaker Interface (TIDM-02004) reference design, provide a introduction intoduction into gesturing software, how it can be incorporated into new product designs, and demonstrate a real-world gesturing application that controls a Windows® Media Player using the CAPT-MSP-FR2633 CapTIvate™ Capacitive Touch development kit.
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References to the MSP430FR2633 MCU, MSP-CAPT-FR2633 development kit,CapTIvate Design Center, CapTIvate Technology Guide, and TIDM-02004 reference design are made throughout this document. Follow these links for more information related to these topics.