capacitive touch

40 Articles

Hacking Touch Screens To Count Pulses

July 9, 2017 by 5 Comments

Heart rate sensors available for DIY use employ photoplethysmography which illuminates the skin and measures changes in light absorption. These sensors are cheap, however, the circuitry required to interface them to other devices is not. [Petteri Hyvärinen] is successfully investigating the use of capacitive touchscreens for heart rate sensing among other applications.

The capacitive sensor layer on modern-day devices has a grid of elements to detect touch. Typically there is an interfacing IC that translates the detected touches into filtered digital numbers that can be used by higher level applications. [optisimon] first figured out a way to obtain the raw data from a touch screen. [Petteri Hyvärinen] takes the next step by using a Python script to detect time variations in the data obtained. The refresh rate of the FT5x06 interface is adequate and the data is sent via an Arduino in 35-second chunks to the PC over a UART. The variations in the signal are very small, however, by averaging and then using the autocorrelation function, the signal was positively identified as a pulse.

A number of applications could benefit from this technique if the result can be replicated on other devices. Older devices could possibly be recycled to become low-cost medical equipment at a fraction of the cost. There is also the IoT side of things where the heart-rate response to media such as news, social media and videos could be used to classify content.

Check out our take on the original hack for capacitive touch imaging as well as using a piezoelectric sensor for the same application.

Controlling A Moog Werkstatt With A Capacitive Touch Jankó Keyboard

June 8, 2017 by 1 Comment

[Ben Bradley], a member of Freeside Atlanta, built a capacitive touch Jankó keyboard for the Georgia Tech Moog Hackathon. Jankó Keyboards are a 19th-Century attempt to add a more compact piano keyboard. There are three times as many keys as a traditional piano but arranged vertically for (supposedly) greater convenience while playing–an entire octave can be covered with one hand. But yeah, it never caught on.

[Ben]’s project consists of a series of brass plates wired to capacitive touch breakout boards from Adafruit, one for each of the Arduino Mega clone’s four I2C addresses. When a key is touched, the Arduino sends a key down signal to the Werkstatt while using a R-2R ladder to generate voltage for the VCO exponential input.

The most recent Moog Hackathon was the third.  Twenty-five teams competed from Georgia Tech alone, plus more from other schools, working for 48 hours to build interfaces with Moog Werkstatt-Ø1 analog synths, competing for $5,000 in cash prizes as well as Werkstatts for the top three teams.

We’re synth-fiends here on Hackaday: we cover everything from analog synths to voltage controlled filters.

Via Freeside Atlanta, photo by [Nathan Burnham].

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World’s Thinnest Morse Code Touch Paddle

February 18, 2017 by 16 Comments

Morse code enthusiasts can be picky about their paddles. After all, they are the interface between the man and the machine, and experienced telegraphers can recognize each other by their “hands”. So even though [Edgar] started out on a cheap, clicky paddle, it wouldn’t be long before he made a better one of his own. And in the process, he also made what we think is probably the thinnest paddle out there, being a single sheet of FR4 PCB material and a button cell battery. This would be perfect for a pocketable QRP (low-power) rig. Check it out in action in the video below.

There’s not much to a Morse code paddle. It could, of course, be as simple as two switches — one for “dit” and one for “dah”. You could make one out of a paperclip. [Edgar]’s version replaces the switches with capacitive sensing, done by the ATtiny4 on board. Because this was an entry in the 1kB challenge, he prioritized code size over features, and got it down to a ridiculous 126 bytes! Even so, it has deluxe features like autorepeat. We’d have to dig into the code to see if it’s iambic.
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Touch Piano Hits All The Right Notes

December 18, 2015 by 18 Comments

We love a good musical build, and this one is no exception. For their ECE4760 final project, [Wendian Jiang], [Hanchen Jin], and [Lin Wang] of Cornell built the nicest-looking touch piano we’ve seen in a while. It has five 4051 multiplexers that take input from 37 capacitive touch keys fashioned from aluminium foil and copper tape. Thanks to good debounce code, the sounds are clean even though the keyboard is capable of four-note polyphony.

A PIC32 and a Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU) module generate a small, steady current that charges up the keys. The PIC scans the pins continuously waiting for touch input. When human capacitance is detected, the value is compared with the base capacitance using the ADC and the sound is generated with the Karplus-Strong algorithm.

The group’s original plans for the project included a TFT screen to show the notes on a staff as they are played. While that would have been awesome, there was just too much going on already to be able to accurately capture the notes as well as their duration. Check it out after the break.

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Play Music With Your Painting Using Teensy

February 21, 2015 by 5 Comments

[sab-art], a collaboration between [Sophia Brueckner] and [Eric Rosenbaum], has created a touch-sensitive musical painting. Initially, basic acrylic paint is used for the majority of the canvas. Once that is dry, conductive paint is used to make the shapes that will be used for the capacitive touch sensing. As an added step to increase the robustness, nails are hammered through each painted shape and connected with wiring in the back of the painting. These wires are then connected to the inputs of a Teensy++ 2.0, using Arduino code based on MaKey MaKey to output MIDI. The MIDI is then sent to a Mac Mini which then synthesizes the sound using Ableton Live.  Any MIDI-processing software would work, though. For this particular painting, external speakers are used, but incorporating speakers into your own composition is certainly possible.

A nice aspect of this project is that it can be as simple or as complex as you choose. Multiple conductive shapes can be connected through the back to the same Teensy input so that they play the same sound. While [sab-art] went with a more abstract look, this can be used with any style. Imagine taking a painting of Dogs Playing Poker and having each dog bark in its respective breed’s manner when you touch it, or having spaceships make “pew pew” noises. For a truly meta moment, an interactive MIDI painting of a MIDI keyboard would be sublime. [sab-art] is refining the process with each new painting, so even more imaginative musical works of art are on the horizon. We can’t wait to see and hear them!

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Slick Bathroom Mirror Is All Tricked Out

February 12, 2015 by 6 Comments

A Mirror surrounded by a string of brightly lit lamps is something you usually get to see in a Movie Star’s dressing room. [pickandplace] was inspired by the Movies, and a dark bathroom, to come up with a Bathroom Mirror equipped with some bells and whistles. To start with, his planning was quite detailed, sketching out the features and constraints for his design. He chose to use a round mirror with 12 LED bulbs (which are safer than 220V bulbs) so it can work as a clock. User input is handled by a motion sensor to automatically switch it on/off and a capacitive touch dimmer. Under the hood there’s an RTC (for clock and brightness adjustment based on time of day), simple boost PWM LED driver, thermal management for the LEDs which are 10W, temperature sensor to pipe down the current if the LEDs get too hot, and even an anti-fogging heater strip – phew!

His execution is no less brilliant. Starting with building the wooden frame and ending with the code for driving all the electronics. Along the way, you will find detailed notes on the LED’s, PWM Driver, Heat sinking, and capacitive Touch dimmer using Atmel’s AT42QT2160 Qslide – Matrix Sensor IC. He had some trouble with the Motion Sensor PIR module, and hasn’t yet written the code to implement it. His first version used a PIC18F87J50, and the next iteration had an ATXmega256A3BU – but he asks us not to get into the Microchip vs. Amtel debate. We have to agree on that. Sharp readers will point out that neither of the two micro’s can provide 12 PWM channels. Well, worry not, he has it all figured out. He also coded up a simple control interface which is handy when the unit is hooked up over USB to a computer. To top it off, he built a miniature LED ring to use as a “Simulator” while working on the code so he didn’t have to lug the heavy Mirror in and out of the bathroom. How’s that for doing a good job better! Source files are on his Github repo, and links to the hardware schematics are peppered throughout his blog.

If you don’t want to build something so fancy, look up the Bathroom Mirror with HUD which displays Time and Weather

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Capacitive Christmas Organ With Living Lenses Of Slappable Light

December 24, 2014 by 5 Comments

We’ve seen capacitive touch organs manifest in pumpkin form. Though they are a neat idea, there’s something about groping a bunch of gourds that stirs a feeling of mild discomfort every time I play one. [mcreed] probably felt the same way and thus created this light-up Jello organ, so he can jiggle-slap Christmas carols, removing any sense of doubt that touching food to play music is weird…

This take on the capacitive tone producing instrument makes clever use of the transparent properties of Jello as well as its trademark wiggling. [mcreed] fills several small mold forms with festively colored strawberry and lime mix. One end of a wire connection is submerged in the liquid of each cup before it has a chance to solidify along with a bright LED. Once chilled and hardened, the gelatinous mass acts as a giant light emitting contact pad. An Arduino is the micro-controller used for the brain, assigning each Jello shape with a corresponding note. By holding onto a grounding wire and completing the acting circuit, one can play songs on the Jello by poking, spanking, or grazing the mounds.

Though I’m not entirely sure if the video is Jello propaganda or not, the idea is applaudable. I prompt anyone to come up with a more absurd item to use for a capacitive organ (zucchinis have already been done).

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