Making the cap touch board more sensitive for touchless commands

[ashton326]

Hello! Forgive me as I know basically nothing about all of this.

I have a wireling zero with a TinyCircuits cap touch strip. I need it to be more sensitive so that I can give inputs without actually touching it.
Is this done in the software (using CapTouchSimple) or do I need to change/add a resistor somewhere on this board?

Ultimately I am trying to sense through about 1/2" of silicone. I may extend the touch points as well if they need to be spaced further apart or if they need to be enlarged with a copper pad or something like that.

Thank you!

[lennevia]

Hi there,

Since silicone is an insulator, you would want to extend the touch points/copper plates. I'm not sure on the exact material specs involved that might answer how much copper, but something analog (like a push button) might work better than scraping the insulation on the PCB and adding more copper.

Can you tell me more about what you are making? I may have some better recommendations on how you can accomplish your goals.

I'll add that I've applied a 1/8" sheet of acrylic to the cap touch pads directly with some double-sided tape and had luck with being able to detect a touch. Have you tested the silicone layer? Can you do a thinner layer? What all have you tested so far?

Cheers,
Réna

[ashton326]

Yes, silicone is an insulator. So is wood, yet there are dozens of videos of people using cap touch through fairly thick wood. I may switch to acrylic as well for my lens, but would like to make the silicone work. I think my goal here is to get past the predetermined capTouch.isTouched that has filtered the sensitivity quite low to avoid noise.

There is a video using a different product where the user does 3 things.
1. edits the code to be WAY more sensitive,
2. Uses are larger pad/conductor
3. Changes a resistor for higher sensitivity.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvMYqBj6CSg

I dont want to have to order that other board if I can make this one work.

Thanks!

[lennevia]

Have you tested the 1/2" silicone with the cap touch sensor?

If you want to edit the library, the CapTouchWireling.h and .cpp are available on our GitHub: https://github.com/TinyCircuits/TinyCircuits-ATtiny841-Library

You should have a local copy of the library from the tutorial example.

Cheers,
Réna