Targeting automotive interior touch interfaces and motor control applications

Silicon Labs (Country Manager Baek Woon-dal) announced the launch of two automotive-grade EFM8 microcontroller (MCU) families designed for extensive touch interfaces in vehicle interiors and motor control applications for automotive electronics.

The new AEC-Q100 certified ultra-low power EFM8SB1 Sleepy Bee family provides advanced on-chip capacitive touch technology that can easily replace physical buttons with touch controls. The EFM8BB1/BB2 Busy Bee family features high-performance analog and digital peripherals and can be flexibly used for motor-driven rear-view mirrors, headlights, and seat controls.

All EFM8 MCUs deliver best-in-class 8-bit performance through a combination of various advanced features and performance, including high-speed pipelined 8051 cores, ultra-low power, precision analog and enhanced communication peripherals, on-chip oscillators, small footprint packages, and patented crossbar architecture technology that simplifies PCB design and I/O pin routing through flexible multiplexing of digital and analog peripherals.

The EFM8SB Sleepy Bee MCU is Silicon Labs' most energy-friendly 8-bit device, boasting unrivaled touch performance, an ultra-low power sleep mode (50nA in full memory retention and brown-out detection), and a fast startup time of 2µs. Automotive-grade EFM8SB devices support ambient temperatures of -40 to +85°C, core speeds of up to 25 MHz, and flash memory of up to 8 kB.

This MCU integrates a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), high-performance timers, a temperature sensor, and enhanced SPI, I2C, and UART serial ports. The on-chip high-resolution capacitive-to-digital converter (CDC) provides wake-on-touch functionality with extremely low current consumption of less than 1µA and 12 robust capacitive touch channels, eliminating the need for on/off switches in many applications.

This MCU is ideal for touch-based control applications such as dome lights and overhead buttons. Capacitive touch control provides a more durable and moisture-resistant user interface (UI) and a sophisticated feel for modern electronically equipped automobiles.

Silicon Labs supports the design of touch-sensor interfaces using the Capacitive Sense Library through the Simplicity Studio™ development toolset, providing all the functions and algorithms necessary to add capacitive sensor interfaces to automotive applications. Simplicity Studio provides firmware that is ready for immediate production use, ranging from button scanning to noise filtering.

By using the Capacitive Sense Profiler to visualize real-time data and noise levels of capacitive sensing buttons, developers can easily customize touch and non-touch thresholds and noise filtering settings, making it very easy to add capacitive touch technology to in-vehicle user interfaces.

The EFM8BB1/BB2 Busy Bee MCU offers exceptional characteristics for cost-sensitive applications through a balanced combination of performance, energy efficiency, and value. Providing core speeds of up to 50 MHz and flash memory capacities ranging from 2 to 64 KB, this MCU integrates high-performance peripherals—such as a high-resolution 12-bit ADC, high-speed 12-bit DAC, low-power comparator, voltage reference, communication peripherals with enhanced throughput, and an integrated oscillator—into a compact 3 mm x 3 mm package. Thanks to this outstanding level of single-chip integration, system designers do not need to use discrete analog components, allowing them to reduce system cost and board area.

Supporting a wide temperature range of -40°C to +125°C, the EFM8BB1/BB2 devices are ideal for applications that must meet demanding automotive-grade quality requirements while delivering high performance at any temperature. The EFM8BB1 device offers optimal cost-effectiveness for cost-sensitive designs, while the BB2 product provides enhanced analog and digital peripheral performance. The EFM8BB1/BB2 MCUs are highly suitable for analog-centric automotive body control applications such as seat adjustment, fan control, window lifters, and fuel tank sensors.