QT600 Atmel QTouch Kit

Atmel QT600 Starter Kit

Evaluation and Development Kit for QTouch Library

The QT600 is a starter kit and development system for Atmel's AVR® 8-Bit and 32-Bit RISC Flash microcontrollers.

It gives designers a quick start to develop capacitive buttons, sliders or rotors.

It interfaces with AVR QTouch® Studio, which you can find out the optimal settings for the used button type.

The QT600 kit can also used as a programmer which interfaces with AVR Studio®, Atmel's Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for code writing and debugging.

• - USB Interface to PC
• - QT600 is powered by a USB interface
• - 3 MCU-boards (ATtiny88, ATmega324PA, ATxmega128A1)
• - 3 sensor boards for up to 64 channels

Details:

Atmel QT600 QTouch Evaluation and Development Kit

Ref: QT600, Part No 715-3675

Date 28-04-2011

Hörbinger Manuel

First Impressions

The kit arrives in a very impressive box about 370mm x 235mm x 80mm with a very inspiring robot motif printed across the front. On opening the box, the content was clearly packed in several layers.

The package contained:

• - QT600 main board
• - ATTiny88 MCU board
• - ATMega324 MCU board
• - ATXMega128A1 MCU board
• - QT-Button board (8 channels “QTouch” for ATTiny88)
• - QT-Button board (64 channels “QMatirx” for ATMega324)
• - QT-Button board (16 channels “QMatrix” for ATXMega128A1)
• - Flat plug connection (to connect the MCU boards with QT-Button boards)
• - Many flat plug connections (to connect other boards with QT600)
• - USB – PC connection
• - QT600 Quick Start description
• - 20 Bumpon
• - Technical Library

Browsing and Installing the QTouch Studio and AVR Studio Software

My initial tests used a standard desktop PC running Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3.

On clicking on the DVD, a web-style interface proclaims the AVR® Technical Library DVD contains material for both the 8-bit AVR and the 32-bit AVR32 family of MCUs.

I wanted to install the AVR Studio with the link on the supplied DVD but this didn’t work.

Now I have visit the Atmel side on www.atmel.com and have installed the latest version of the AVR Studio 4.18 and the latest version of the QTouch Studio 4.3.1.

To use the QTouch Studio software correctly, you must also download the QTouch Library 4.3.

For the AVR Studio you also need to install WinAVR from the third party tools if you want to make use of the excellent free C compiler.

On starting the AVR Studio, it is relatively easy to create a new project. The chip supplied with the kit is the ATMEGA8515. It is important to select the device correctly with any special settings, as these are used to generate compiler options and to select default settings elsewhere in the application.

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

The AVR-Studio integrated development interface is well laid out and although it contains a very large amount of functionality, it is relatively easy to navigate around. The 'help' menu is especially useful as it takes you directly to the documentation you will most likely need. Hovering the mouse over icons results in a useful description of their function.

In AVR Studio you can also open the QTouch Studio by a direct Link.

Connecting the QT600 hardware

Following the instructions in the QuickStart guide (on the DVD), it’s a very simply description to use the QT600. The QT600 kit is powered by the USB Port.

At first time connect the QT600 with the PC, the QT600 will automatically install the hardware driver that you need and you can start to develop.

I didn’t have a problem with installing the software tools and drivers and I could immediately start to program the MCU boards.

Use QT600 as a programmer

To use the QT600 board as a programmer, press the button and keep it pressed until Status LED changed from orange to red color for ~5 seconds.

This will switch the QT600 from Touch Debug mode to Programmer mode.

The Touch Data LED on the QT600 indicates mode:

• - Touch Data LED green: Touch Debug Mode (default mode after power-up)
• - Touch Data LED off: Programmer Mode

Make sure that the Touch Data LED is off before attempting to connect to the QT600 from AVR Studio programming dialog!

• - Connect a 6 or 10 wire flat-cable between the ISP/JTAG  headers on the QT600 and the selected MCU board.
• - Make sure that VTG header is mounted on the QT600
• - Connect the USB cable
• - Press the button on the QT600 to switch to programmer mode (~5 sec)
• - From the connect dialog in AVR Studio, select QT600 and press connect
• - Go to the HW settings tab and set the target voltage. Minimum voltage is 1,8V.
• - Program the application code. For detailed instruction on how to do this, see the help section in AVR Studio.
• - Program the fuses:  The correct fuse valves are listed in the main.c file in the example project for selected device.
• - Disconnect the USB plug from QT600
• - Remove the flat cable between the programming headers, and mount a 10-wire cable between the “Touch Data” headers.
• - Connect the touch panel
  • - - For ATTiny88: Use the QTOUCH8 Panel
  • - - For ATXMega128A1: Use the QTOUCH16Panel
  • - - For ATMega324PA: Use QTOUCH 8x8 Panel
• - Start AVR QTouch Studio
• - Plug in the USB cable to the QT600. AVR QTouch Studio should now automatically connect to the kit.
• - Press the Start Debug button.

You should now be able to view the touch data signals and the state of each sensor.

Useful Documents

For an easy start with QTouch and QMatrix, I would recommend download the following documents:

• - QTouch User Guide
• - Touch Sensor Design Guide
• - QTouch and QMatrix Sensitivity Tuning for Keys, Sliders and Wheels
• - QTouch Training Guide (for a simply start)

Conclusion:

The QT600 Kit is a really helpful Tool to understand and develop those kind of buttons. Especially the QT600 Board itself can be used by the end-user Hardware with the QTouch debug feature over SPI or TWI. The Visualization can be designed any way the front panel looks like in the end. The automatic recognition of the Hardware ID is really sexy. Overall I could not have developed my piece of Hardware without this Tool !