TI has introduced a family of capacitance-sensing integrated circuits

     Texas Instruments has introduced a family of capacitance-sensing integrated circuits. The range is immune to ambient noise from radio, power, lighting and motors. Compared to existing capacitive sensing solutions, the FDC2214 series offers a 60-fold increase in performance when noise occurs. This enables human and object sensing in any environment based on a low-cost capacitive approach. These new devices bring the benefits of capacitive sensing to applications that previously relied on other sensing technologies, providing solutions with better appearance, lower system costs and higher reliability for automotive, consumer and industrial applications.

     The unique narrow-band architecture of the FDC2214 series eliminates harmful noise and common environmental disturbances, bringing the benefits of capacitive sensing to today's real-world sensing applications, including display wake-up for reduced power consumption on appliances, automotive displays, thermostats, and consumer electronics. The FDC2214 IC also performs capacitive sensing of automatic doors or gates, avoiding collisions by sensing nearby objects or people. In addition, designers can use the FDC2214 IC to detect the wave of the hand to activate the soap dispense, which can enable the car radio to change channels and many other functions to make driving safer.