qt301 proximity sensor?

[pete edwards]

Does anyone have a few Atmel/Quantum QT301 capacitance2voltage ICs I
could buy? I could really use 3 of them. Willing to pay extra to make it
worth your while. Hoping to find something in the next few days.

If you haven't heard of the ATMEL QT ICs you should read about them.
Really cool stuff, and super easy to use touch and close proximity sensors.

http://www.atmel.com/products/overview_touch.asp

Mouser sells a bunch of them in surface mount format. The development
module looks amazing!
They produced one a few years ago that output a varying pulse width
dependent on proximity. basically a proximity to voltage converter. It's
the QT301. I've done a LOT of searching and can't find any! Digikey had
them but their are none in stock. I seriously doubt they will get any
more since it's a discontinued item. Still waiting to hear back from
them. I'm looking into larger discontinued IC distributors but they have
pretty high min orders.
Here's the spec sheet:
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/97490/QUANTUM/QT301.html

here's a video showing how simple it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLXIEXfpUjM

Thanks y'all
-pete

[James George]

that's really awesome.

Does it work with any arbitrary conductive material? could it be like
a metal sculpture that detects your presence, or does it have to be a
particular type of thin film like in that video?

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- James

[Ryan Micallef]

Why were they discontinued?  Presumably they were replaced by something more capable, smaller, or lower power.  Do send to the list if you find a supplier elsewhere or a similar product; I'd love to play around with a few of these.

Would this work under/near water?  I have a few applications in mind around a sink or shower; controlling water temp, pressure, fan, lights, audio, etc.  Seems like water might screw with the capacitance (or short it if the sensor was completely submerged), but if all you're looking for is large deltas and using running water (lots of little unconnected droplets), maybe you'd be okay.

[pete edwards]

The sensor material is pretty flexible. I think as long as it is
conductive it will work. I'm sure different materials work better than
others though. I think the data sheet goes over that in some detail.
I want to do the sculpture that detects your presence. The range is
pretty short, but I'm hoping a huge conductor will cast a greater
sensing field.
I emailed a bunch of obsolete parts distributors. I'm sure the minimum
buy is pretty high. If I find them, I'll contact this list about doing a
group buy.
-pete

[James George]

yeah i'd buy a few with ya for sure

--
- James

[Tymm Twillman]

i found a single QT300 in the bottom of my parts bin. it's got serial out instead of the PWM out of the 301 (don't remember if there are other differences) but you're welcome to it if it'd be useful.

IIRC the QT chips use the same tech that's being used in lots of capacitive touch sensors now -- could you just use the Arduino CapSense library ( capSenseRaw() )instead?

[pete edwards]

Hey James,
Thanks so much for looking and thanks even more for the offer, but the
QT300 is too complicated to implement for what I'm doing. I think they
might still be available for sale.
-pete

[pete edwards]

Oops I meant to say thanks to Tymm for the offer :-)

On 1/7/2010 12:51 PM, Tymm Twillman wrote:

[pete edwards]

Hey Ryan,
I don't think they were replaced. I think they were just discontinued. There are lots of artistic applications, but i don't think there are lots of industrial apps.
Not sure about water. CHeck out the QT line, they have some liquid level sensors that would probably work.
-pete

[Matthew Sparks]

Hi,
The asset mgr at work got new barcode scanners for asset tracking and asked me if I wanted his old ones, so I now have two (1 working, 1 not) PSC Falcon 320 dos bases barcode scanners (not the wireless ones)
http://www.currentdirections.com/hardware/psc/falcon-320.html

It is basically a dos based data terminal runs on 3 triple A batteries and has a laser barcode scanner built into it, an rj-45 on the bottom for serial communication. has a keyboard and an lcd screen.

keeps data as long as the batteries hold a charge.

So my question is any bright ideas for re-purposing, reusing/ hacking these things?

my thought was seeing if I could fixed the one I could try to communicate via laser between the two terminals.

Matt Sparks

[c f]

It's got a pc-card slot - you could try to add WIFI, and then surf the internet using lynx for DOS =)

[Foxx D'Gamma]

I have some experience hacking embedded devices. This unit seems its
built off of a 486 CPU clone, which means it can run barebones x86
operating systems. Depending how the OS is loaded and held on the
device, probably some sort of Flash ROM, you can load a very light
weight linux distro. Looking at the manual it says an "ATA Flash Card,
8MB, 16MB, or 32MB. Thats not a lot, but it sounds like its typical
NAND flash. I may be able to help you build or find (I might even
already have something in my stockpile) something to bump up the
storage on this unit. Ive gotten uClinux and Open-Embedded down to
about 12MB, but anything of use will be at least 120MB - 900MB
depending on how the hardware is built.

I wouldnt be able to tell you anything unless I had it in front of me
and in pieces. Right off the bat I can tell you a 33Mhz 486 class CPU
with a PCMCIA wifi card would be a fun toy... but absolutely useless
beyond even a basic wifi scanner or SSH terminal. I can tell you from
personal experience that when you dont have any sort of standard
keyboard on a device using a command line linux operating system is a
massive hindrance and headache, if not completely crippling.

If you can manage to bring them into craft night let me know if you
are coming and I can bring some of my tools and toys to see what this
thing might be able to do. If you arent really interested in it I
would be more than happy to give them a good new home!

Cheers, Beers, and Bunny ears,
Foxx

[Christopher Fenton]

It sounds like the os might be stored on the PCMCIA flash card. I used
to have a tablet computer that was setup like that. If that is the
case, I don't think anyone makes combo wifi/flash cards
-Chris

Sent from my iPod