Touchscreen recognises fingers before contact

Cypress Semiconductor has announced support for hover detection for its capacitive touchscreen technology.

The new feature, driven by Cypress's Truetouch, enables smart touchscreen solutions that anticipate the touch of a finger and enlarge content such as points on a map or the font of tiny website links to make them easier to find and select.

Hover detection changes the fundamental navigation functions on mobile devices by emulating 'mouseover', a feature well known in the personal-computer segment for web navigation.

The feature delivers easier, more accurate interface navigation for handsets, GPS systems and other mobile applications.

A video demonstration of the hover feature is available at the company's website.

The video includes footage of a Truetouch touchscreen recognising a user's finger as it approaches the touch sensor.

A corresponding circle on the screen changes size to demonstrate how the application detects the user's finger as it hovers above the screen.

Cypress recently announced highly accurate passive stylus support for a tip as thin as 1mm, allowing users additional levels of accuracy and control for text entry, keyboard, handwriting recognition and other productive functions for mobile applications.

A video of Cypress's stylus support is available at the company's website.

Cypress's Truetouch range includes single-touch, multi-touch gesture and multi-touch all-point offerings.

Cypress was the first company to introduce multi-touch all-point functionality, which can track an unlimited number of touches.

This capability allows designers to create new usage models for products such as mobile handsets, portable media players (PMPs), GPS systems and other products, and has been in mass production since 2008.

Truetouch allows designers to implement differentiated features and make last-minute design iterations without board changes.

Cypress's high-performance TMA300 multi-touch all-point family provides best-in-class scan times for true multi-finger touch and superior signal-to-noise ratio for the most demanding touchscreen applications.

The flexible Truetouch solution allows customers to rapidly develop leading-edge solutions without having to buy turnkey modules.

They can use touch sensors (glass or film) and LCDs from preferred partners and can develop innovative mechanical designs ranging from flat to curved surfaces of varying thickness.

In addition, Truetouch devices offer noise immunity and capacitive-sensing technology, enabling flawless operation in noisy RF and LCD environments.

Cypress is currently working with lead customers on hover support for the Truetouch touchscreen solution.

A hover-support module is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2010.

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