SparkFun Capacitive Touch Slider - CAP1203 (Qwiic)

If you're seeking a unique and engaging way to add capacitive touch to your next art project or science experiment, consider the SparkFun Capacitive Touch Slider. This product is designed with built-in touch pads which can be used as three distinct touch inputs or as a slider. You also have the option to enable a touch input to function as a power button, customize the sensitivity of your touch pads, and experiment with the interrupt alert LED. The best part? It's Qwiic compatible, meaning no soldering is required to connect it to your system. However, if you prefer, Sparkfun has also provided 2.54mm-spaced pins for breadboard use or for creating your own touch pads.

The board features an arrow shape on the front, housing three separate capacitive touch pads. Sparkfun has also broken out the capacitive touch sensor lines as plated through-holes on the top of the board. These pins can be used to connect to your own capacitive touch pads. The CS1 pin connects to the left pad, the CS2 pin to the middle pad, and the CS3 pin to the right pad.

It should be noted that the I²C address of the CAP1203 is 0x28 and is hardware defined. A multiplexer/Mux is required to communicate to multiple CAP1203 sensors on a single bus. If you need to use more than one CAP1203 sensor, consider using the Qwiic Mux Breakout.

The SparkFun Qwiic connect system is an ecosystem of I²C sensors, actuators, shields, and cables that make prototyping faster and less prone to error. All Qwiic-enabled boards use a common 1mm pitch, 4-pin JST connector. This reduces the amount of required PCB space, and polarized connections mean you can’t hook it up wrong.

The Capacitive Touch Slider comes with a host of features including 3 unique capacitive touch inputs, an emulated slider, power button setting, programmable sensitivity, automatic recalibration, and a supply voltage operating range between 3.3V - 5V. To get started with the SparkFun Capacitive Touch Slider, refer to the Hookup Guide, Schematic, Eagle Files, Datasheet (CAP1203), Arduino Library, and GitHub Product Repo.