Releases

Atmel and i-Novi to Deliver 3DA TouchSensing Intuitive Wireless Lighting Control

EMBEDDED WORLD 2010, Nuremberg, Germany, March 2, 2010 - Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, and i-Novi, an innovative and leading design services team, today announced that it will join forces to deliver a 3D Accelerometer (3DA) and capacitive touch sensing intuitive wireless lighting control reference design platform.

This reference design is based on Atmel’s QTouch Library supported RF single-chip, ATmega128RFA1, featuring both a high-performance Atmel AVR® microcontroller and Atmel’s best-in-class 2.4 GHz RF transceiver in a single chip. Combining QMatrix®, the most reliable capacitive sensing method used in a number of lighting products for user interface and control functions, and R4Control, Atmel’s ZigBee® RF4CE compliant software platform, the ATmega128RFA1 is perfect for touch-based RF remote controls including lighting control, remote control, iPOD® docking interface, and control panels keypads. The 3DA expands user interface experiences even further by adding a complementary control mechanism. i-Novi is an experienced team with a proven track record of delivering innovative products to the consumer, domotics and lighting market.

Atmel’s ATmega128RFA1 is the Industry’s first wireless and touch single-chip microcontroller. The embedded radio interface offers a unique hardware feature set to boost the overall system performance and to support a great variety of IEEE 802.15.4 compliant applications. The radio link reliability is also improved when using the antenna diversity feature, which automatically selects the best signal from two antennas for each incoming frame. The device supports the control of external power amplifiers for range extension. High-data rate modes of up to 2 Mbit/s are available to address the general purpose 2.4 GHz ISM applications.

The combination of a low-power and single-chip design enables designers to implement a new generation of battery driven systems, smaller board space and a lower overall system bill of material (BOM). This makes the ATmega128RFA1 the most efficient wireless touch microcontroller in the market.

System development is supported by Atmel's free software stacks, libraries and hardware evaluation and development kits. Atmel’s AVR ATmega128RFA1 microcontroller offers the performance while running the free QTouch® library for embedding capacitive touch buttons, sliders and wheels functionality. i-Novi has used the excellent QMatrix® technology which delivers unequalled precision for touch operations, superb low power characteristics and leading signal-to-noise ratios. Atmel’s QMatrix detects touch using a scanned passive matrix of electrode sets. A single ATmega128RFA1 device can drive up to 64 keys, offering a very low cost-per-key wireless control product to be achieved.

Information and Photo
Atmel's ATmega128RFA1 RF single-chip AVR® product information is available at: www.atmel.com/wireless/single-chip.

More product information about Atmel’s QTouch Library is available at: www.atmel.com/QTouchlib.

More information about Atmel’s ATmega128RFA1 evaluation kit is available at: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card_mcu.asp?tool_id=4677.

To download a high-resolution photo of this reference design, please click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/pressroom/wirelessdesign.

i-Novi and Product Realization Design Services
i-Novi is a provider of design services and enabling IP to companies seeking to bring products successfully to market. The company focuses on early stage and ‘first of a kind’ product developments, helping clients bridge the gap from initial idea to feasibility concept and through to final production. The company also excels in the development where requirements are fuzzy or unclear and we have proven experience and methodologies for resolving these uncertainties for clients. More information can be found at http://www.i-Novi.com.

About Atmel
Atmel Corporation is a global leader in the design and manufacture of capacitive touch solutions, microcontrollers, and complementary products such as capacitive touch sensing ICs, ASICs, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete microcontroller based system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, automotive, security, communications computing markets. By providing tools and support Atmel enables those customers to lead the markets they serve with electronic products that are smaller, smarter, more cost-effective and versatile than ever before.

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Press Contacts:
Clive Over, Director of Public Relations
Tel: +1 (408) 436-4305, Email: clive.over@atmel.com