open-ephys / commutators

Active coaxial commutator for electrophysiology
https://open-ephys.github.io/commutator-docs/
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Teensy 3.2 and LC EOL #11

Closed jonnew closed 1 month ago

jonnew commented 9 months ago

Both the Teensy LC and 3.2 are end of lifed. We will need to migrate to a different microcontroller option. Most MCUs don't come with integrated capacitive touch sensing. Additionally it has proven to be quite a difficult thing to get working reliably. However, it reducing design complexity and is appropriate for environments with animals. An option would be switching to some relatively generic MCU, e.g. RP2040 and adding an external cap sensor that hopefully takes care of the calibration issues for us. @aacuevas suggests the following:

Microchip seems to have a family of those, which is a good thing for future-proofing. And it's a bit under a dollar and a half. In any case, it will need to be tested.

jonnew commented 1 month ago

Some measurements of GND referenced capacitance at on the V1.1 PCB

1 kHz
LED Button 14 pF
Left Turn 51 pF
Right Turn 45 pF
Enable/Disable 42 pF

This is right at the limit for the chip suggested above:

image

Might be work decreasing this bit (e.g. by mesh filling the copper islands of the big buttons with ~50 fill density)

cjsha commented 1 month ago

Thanks for taking those measurements, I'll try the 50% mesh fill. That's also suggested by: Capacitive-Touch-Sensor-Design-Guide-DS00002934-B.pdf Screenshot_20240920-123908

jonnew commented 1 month ago

Nice, that guide is cool.