Bare Conductive Touch Board

The Touch Board from Bare Conductive is a versatile Arduino@Heart board that transforms almost any material or surface into a sensor. This board provides 12 electrodes that can be connected to conductive ink or other connectors, allowing you to create interactive surfaces, musical instruments, or light switches using the Arduino IDE. The Touch Board is also fitted with an onboard MP3 player, letting you convert your favorite songs into MIDI tunes. In essence, anything you can do with an Arduino or Arduino-compatible device, you can achieve with the Touch Board and some conductive ink.

The Touch Board is a microcontroller board specifically designed with dedicated capacitive touch and MP3 decoder ICs. It includes a 3.5mm audio jack and micro SD card holder for file storage, and comes with a 128MB micro SD card. The board is based on the ATmega32U4 and operates at 16MHz from 3-5.5VDC. It is equipped with a micro USB connector, a JST connector for an external lithium polymer (LiPo) cell, a power switch, and a reset button. The maximum size for the microSD card used with this board is 32GB.

The Bare Conductive Touch Board is akin to the Arduino Leonardo and can be programmed using the Arduino IDE (1.5.6 or later). Power the Touch board by connecting it to a micro USB or a 3.7V lithium polymer (LiPo) cell via the 2-way JST PH series connector. The onboard ATmega32U4 can function as a mouse or a keyboard, serial port, or USB MIDI device when connected to a computer.

Note: The Touch Board does not come with a micro USB cable or LiPo battery. These items need to be purchased separately.

Package Includes:

• 1x Touch Board
• 1x microSD Card (128MB)

Key Features:

• Arduino Leonardo compatible in IDE
• Atmel ATMega32U4 Microprocessor
• Freescale MPR121 dedicated touch interface
• VLSI VS1053B audio processor
• Arduino Shield Compatible (check pins available)
• 32 KB of Flash Memory of which 4 KB is used for bootloader
• 5V operating voltage (automatic voltage selector for USB or battery operation)
• Built-in LiPo battery charging with onboard boost circuit for 5V operation
• 16 MHz clock speed
• Can be powered and programmed over USB
• 20 digital I/O pins (3 used for Touch IC and 5 for MP3 IC – can be disabled)
• 7 PWM channels
• 12 analog input channels
• 12 Touch electrodes of which 8 can be configured as extra digital inputs or outputs with PWM capability
• Dimensions: 84mm x 62mm with a maximum height of 10mm (audio connector)
• Supports up to 32GB via micro SD card
• HID Capable

Relevant Documents:

• Datasheet (Touch Board)
• Schematic
• Eagle Files
• Getting Started
• Tutorials
• How to Paint Over Printed Sensors
• Arduino Set Up
• Touch Board vs. MaKey MaKey vs. Pi guide