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Capacitive touchscreen controller is at home in harsh, noisy environments

Wed, Oct 13, 2021

Functional safety-certified capacitive maXTouch touchscreen controllers from Microchip now include the MXT448UD-HA and MXT640UD-HA models, designed to address screen sizes beyond 10 inches.

Networked and connected home appliances enable both users and manufacturers to communicate with them via the internet. This can be a user of a kitchen oven looking up a recipe online or a manufacturer performing remote diagnostics or over-the-air firmware updates. Displays and touch sensors are essential for enabling this functionality in modern appliances and now Microchip Technology has extended the Class B portfolio of touchscreen controllers with two models for larger screen sizes, providing scalability.

The two new members of the IEC/UL 60730 Class B certified touchscreen controller family comply with the IEC61000-4-6 Class A specification for conducted noise immunity up to 10 Vrms (level three for industrial use). This enables products with a touchscreen interface to function in very harsh factory environments where EMI can be caused by conveyer belts, power rails or assembly machinery. In home appliances, manufacturers will benefit from an increased reliability and production yield, says Microchip, rather than risk consumers using unprotected touchscreens on an oven or washing machine that may result in false or missed touches due to EMI from unshielded power transmission, electric motors and neighbouring electrical equipment.

The MXT448UD-HA and MXT640UD-HA touchscreen controllers come with two serial interfaces (SPI and I²C) that operate simultaneously allowing redundancy in a design through the integration of safety features, such as individual communication between the touchscreen controller to the host microprocessor in addition to a safety microcontroller. Touch events are provided to both processors at the same time. This architecture shortens time to market and reduces development cost by allowing all safety-critical firmware to be developed on a dedicated safety-certified microcontroller (with mandatory source code review by an IEC/UL test lab) separate from the main processor running the appliance’s graphical user interface (GUI).

According to Clayton Pillion, director of Microchip’s human machine interface business unit: “maXTouch technology delivers outstanding noise immunity performance allowing for safe and robust operation throughout its lifetime. We have worked closely with customers to deliver the first functional safety touch controller families and are seeing high adoption where noise immunity is critical to a successful product.”

In addition to the IEC compliances, the MXT448UD-HA and MXT640UD-HA family supports an operating temperature up to 105 degrees C, which is a key requirement for cooktops and ovens where the human machine interface (HMI) system is near heating elements.

Microchip offers software to supplement the controllers, including maXTouch Studio (development tool) and maXTouch Analyzer (production end-of-line test/inspection tool).

The general-purpose ATEVK-MXT640UD-A evaluation kit (EVK) is available. The home appliance functional safety version of this evaluation kit is available on request.

The ATMXT448UD-CCUHA1 and ATMXT640UD-CCUHA1 are available in volume production now.

http://www.microchip.com

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Dual-core module supports Bluetooth 5.1’s angle of arrival

Wed, Oct 13, 2021

An RF module with dual-core processor uses Bluetooth technology in what is claimed to be the smallest package on the market. Insight SiP says the ISP2053-AX RF module supports sophisticated applications and removes the need for an additional host processor.

For advanced Bluetooth applications, it has a dual-core Arm processor, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.2 Long Range connectivity, the capability to support Bluetooth Low Energy Audio, and security features via Arm Trustzone. With extended temperature capability up to 105 degrees C, it can support every kind of advanced Bluetooth based solution including angle of arrival and low latency/streaming, says Insight SiP.

The standard 8.0 x 8.0 x 1.0mm package has an integrated RF matching and integrated antenna. There is also 32MHz and 32kHz crystals and DC/DC support for each processor, meaning it is a fully functioning Bluetooth node only requiring a power supply to operate.

This module is based on the nRF5340 Nordic Semiconductor SoC. The next generation architecture has a 2.4GHz transceiver, a 64MHz M33 network core with 256kbyte flash and 64kbyte RAM and a 128MHz M33 application core with 1Mbyte flash and 512kbyte RAM. The two cores can be operated independently to optimise performance for power consumption, throughput, and real time response.

Peripheral connections available to both cores include USB, QSPI, SPI and UART. As well as supporting Bluetooth Low Energy, the module can run Zigbee, Thread and other 802.15.4 based protocols, concurrently with Bluetooth Low Energy. Protocols stacks and applications run on the real time Zephyr operating system which provides a suite of drivers and services.

For security in the IoT, the ISP2053 has Arm Trustzone capability. This allows secure key storage, advanced encryption and root of trust verification, enabling devices to be securely authenticated, updated and data exchange protected end to end.

The ISP2053 RF module is designed to run on a coin cell battery if required. According to Insight SiP, the module’s low power consumption and advanced power management system enable the battery to “last up to several years”.

Initial samples are available now. Full production of the modules will start in 2022. Certification is pending.

Development kits together with sample software will be made available.

http://www.insightsip.com

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Green Hills Software adds RISC-V architecture support to Integrity

Tue, Oct 12, 2021

Safety and security-critical Integrity real-time operating system (RTOS) for RISC-V means that electronics manufacturers can build and deploy safety and security-critical RISC-V systems based on the Integrity software foundation already used in cars, aircraft, trains, secure phones, and surgical devices. Integrity is now integrated with RISC-V processor hardware reference boards from Microchip and SiFive and processor IP (intellectual property) from SiFive. According to Green Hills, this support will enable device manufacturers to reduce the time, cost and complexity of developing and deploying critical software for automotive, military, IoT and industrial solutions based on RISC-V processor architecture.

Integrity is based on a separation kernel architecture that provides resource guarantees, hard real-time determinism and was designed from the beginning to achieve maximum security and safety.

According to Green Hills, the Multi debugger has advanced C/C++ compilers and analysis tools to find even the most difficult bugs on complex RISC-V SoCs comprised of multiple heterogeneous cores where the RISC-V core is either the main general purpose CPU or a secondary special-purpose acceleration core alongside a CPU, such as an Arm core.

Integrity can also help designers develop production-ready systems on leading RISC-V reference boards to meet production requirements for performance, memory efficiency and functional safety (FuSa) through Integrity and Multi. Both have functional safety certifications for automotive (ISO 26262), industrial systems (IEC 61508) and railway (EN 50128).

“The integration of safety and security-critical RTOS, Integrity, into SiFive HiFive products is an exciting step forward for the RISC-V and SiFive ecosystem,” said Dr. Yunsup Lee, CTO, SiFive, and co-inventor of RISC-V.

“Having Green Hills Software bring its full safety and security portfolio to customer applications using PolarFire SoC is a significant milestone for the Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem and to the larger RISC-V ecosystem,” said Tim Morin, technical fellow and marketing at Microchip Technology. “The addition of safe and secure software tools will greatly enable the ability of our joint clients to innovate with a free and open ISA,” he added.

The new Integrity support adds to the range of Green Hills products that are optimised for RISC-V and already in use by customers, including Integrity RTOS for multi-core embedded systems, u-velOSity RTOS, Multi IDE, a C and C++ development environment for multi-core debugging, Green Hills Probe v4, for multi-core hardware, low-level debugging, and trace-powered analysis tools.

The Integrity RTOS, Multi IDE and the Green Hills probe are available now to early-access customers for the Microchip PolarFire Icicle Kit and the SiFive HiFive Unmatched board.

https://www.ghs.com.

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V2X hardware security module is based on tamper-proof microcontroller

Tue, Oct 12, 2021

Trends such as electrification, autonomous driving and connected cars are leading to an increase in the number of communication interfaces in vehicles – wired or wireless. This presents new challenges because the numerous communication channels create new attack surfaces and increase the vulnerability of the systems, explains Infineon Technologies.

To provide the highest level of protection, it has launched the SLS37 V2X hardware security module (HSM) for vehicle to everything (V2X) communication. The SLS37 V2X HSM is based on a secured, tamper-resistant microcontroller tailored to the security needs in V2X applications within telematics control units. It protects the integrity and authenticity of messages, as well as the privacy of the sender. The HSM received the Common Criteria EAL4+ certification, which is expected to become mandatory in European V2X systems.

In a V2X host environment, the discrete HSM helps system integrators to solve the conflicting requirements of high performance and high security. The scope of the SLS37 V2X HSM is focused on high security tasks such as key storage and the generation of signatures for outgoing messages. This removes the burden of a Security Certification from the host processor, which runs the Linux OS (operating system), from the application software as well as the verification of incoming messages.

In addition to automotive telematics control units, the SLS37 V2X HSM can be used in roadside units or other infrastructure for V2X communication. It supports all major vehicle credential management systems including SCMS, CCMS and ESPS. It accepts a wide supply voltage range from 1.6 to 3.6V, comes with a high speed serial peripheral interface (SPI) with up to 10MHz and is qualified for harsh automotive applications according to AEC-Q100.

Infineon offers complementary host software package for immediate use. The personalisation concept leverages chip-unique and customer-individual certificates and keys to enable vendor verification, pairing and transport protection as well as secured-in-field-updates. As a discrete security controller, SLS37 also provides scalability for platform development covering different regions with different security-requirements, adds Infineon.

The SLS37 V2X HSM can be ordered now. .

http://www.infineon.com/SLS37-V2X

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Capacitive touchscreen controller is at home in harsh, noisy environments

Dual-core module supports Bluetooth 5.1’s angle of arrival

Green Hills Software adds RISC-V architecture support to Integrity

V2X hardware security module is based on tamper-proof microcontroller

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