DM160217: 3D Capacitive Sensing, 2.5 ~ 3.465V in

The MGC3130 is the first product based on Microchip’s GestIC® technology. It is developed as a mixed signal controller. The MGC3130 has one transmit and five very sensitive receive channels that are capable to detect distortions of a transmitted electrical field (E-field) corresponding to capacitive changes in the femtofarad (1fF = 10-15F) range.

In order to transmit and receive an electrical field, electrodes have to be connected to the transmitting and receiving channels of the MGC3130 controller. The spatial arrangement of the electrodes allows the chip to determine the center of gravity of the electric field distortion, and thus position tracking of a user’s hand in the detection space.

The entire system solution is composed by three main building blocks: MGC3130 controller IC, embedded GestIC library, and external electrodes.

The MGC3130 controller provides a transmit signal to generate the E-field, conditions the analog signals from the receiving electrodes and processes this data digitally on the SPU. Data exchange between the MGC3130 and the host is conducted via the communication interfaces.