Add lots of touch sensors to your next microcontroller project with this easy-to-use 8-channel capacitive touch sensor breakout board, starring the CAP1188.
This chip can handle up to 8 individual touch pads, and has a very nice feature that makes it stand out for us: it will light up the 8 onboard LEDs when the matching touch sensor fires to help you debug your sensor setup.
- CAP188 has support for both I2C and SPI, so it easy to use with any microcontroller.
- If using I2C, you can select one of 5 addresses, for a total of 40 capacitive touch pads on one I2C 2-wire bus.
- Using this chip is a lot easier than doing the capacitive sensing with analog inputs: it handles all the filtering for you and can be configured for more/less sensitivity.
Comes with a fully assembled board, and a stick of 0.1" header so you can plug it into a breadboard. For contacts, we suggest using copper foil, then solder a wire that connects from the foil pad to the breakout.
Getting started is a breeze with the Adafruit Arduino library and tutorial. You'll be up and running in a few minutes, and if you are using another microcontroller, its easy to port the code.