Renesas Brings Capacitive Touch Support to the RA0 Microcontroller Family with the RA0L1
New low-power part comes complete with a reference design for a capacitive remote control with gesture support.
Renesas has announced a new entry in its RA0 microcontroller family, bringing capacitive touch to the ultra-low-power range for the first time with the RA0L1.
"The RA0L1 combines the industry-leading power consumption and cost-effectiveness of our RA0 Series MCUs [Microcontroller Units] with our unmatched capacitive touch technology and tools," says Renesas' Daryl Khoo of the company's latest microcontroller launch. "We look forward to the many innovative touch interface solutions that our customers will create using these devices."
The RA0L1 is based on a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M23 core, designed for a small footprint and low energy draw, running at up to 32MHz, with 16kB of static RAM (SRAM) and either 32kB or 64kB of flash memory depending on model. There's a 12-bit analog to digital converter with temperature sensor and internal reference voltage, three UART, two asynchronous UARTs, six simplified SPI, six simplified I2C, and two standard I2C buses, and timers including an eight-channel 16-bit timer array unit and a 32-bit interval timer split into four eight-bit channels plus a real-time clock (RTC).
The biggest stand-out feature compared to the rest of the RA0 range, though, is the RA0L1's human machine interface capabilities: it's the first in the family to include on-board capacitive touch support, with a controller delivering up to 24 channels and up to eight controlled current drive ports to reduce the overall bill of materials for touch-sensitive projects.
Other features include a true random number generator (TRNG), flash access window and read protection capabilities, unique per-chip identifiers, invalid memory access protection, A/D test capabilities, a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) calculator, SRAM parity check, register write protection, output level detection, and frequency detection.
More information on the parts, which are now available, can be found on the Renesas website; the company has also announced the FPB-RA0L1 rapid prototyping board at $15.34 — and, as is usual, has partnered the new chips with other components in its catalog to create a reference design, in this case a capacitive-touch remote control with gesture support.