One Step Toward Touch Automation

Functional validation is the process in which the SoC design is tested after the manufacture of the chip. In industry, many engineers work on the functional validation and test the different IPs using different techniques. There are several responsibilities which come under the account of a functional validation engineer. Taking care of the resources and equipment which will be useful at the time of validation is one of the responsibilities. Touch Host Controller (THC) is one of the IPs, where the engineer has to test the touch panel and touch handling capability of the SoC. Such testing requires the touch panel. The Functional Validation Engineer has to order these materials well in advance in order to ensure timely execution of the validation.There are however situations where the required display panel may not be available in time, and as every project has deadlines, as engineers may not be able for the touch panel. What can be the solution in such cases?In this paper, a solution is proposed to handle a situation where a touch panel is not readily available for testing. The solution will try to replace the touch panel with a microcontroller that emulates the touch interface of a touch panel. This allows the touch panel to be replaced and testing to proceed in its absence. The solution proposes the Microchip’s ARM Cortex M0+ AT SAMD21J18A controller to emulate the touch panel to send the data using the HID over I2C protocol.