CapToolKit

a toolkit for prototyping capacitive sensing applications

About

Capacitive Sensing

About

CapToolKit is a hardware and software toolkit for prototyping capacitive sensing systems. It consists of capacitive sensors, a controller unit, software, and supplemental information. The toolkit was developed at the University of Munich (LMU) by Raphael Wimmer.

If you are not familiar with capacitive sensing principles already, please read the introduction to capacitive sensing first.

News

22.10.2008

Order CapToolKit hardware from eproo.net!
You can also download v2.0 hardware schematics/board layouts from the hardware page. V2.0 firmware is also available now. I'm currently finishing the Python and Java APIs and will do a full CTK release really soon now.

Tech Specs

8 sensor channels
8 analog/digital I/O pins
variable update rate, 15-40ms
resolution: I don't have specs for the new board yet.
sensor size: 15x23mm excluding antenna

Goals

CapToolKit aims to enable researchers from various disciplines to apply capacitive sensing in their research. Thus we defined the following goals for our toolkit:

Not Goals

Reasons why you should use CapToolKit

quick and easy deployment
place sensors, connect them to controller, connect controller to PC, start server, application connects to TCP socket, have fun
low complexity
only standard components are used.
hackability
flexible firmware, simple hardware, attaching additional sensors easy
low-cost hardware
initial investment is very low, as is price per sensor
everything open-source
hardware, firmware, software and toolchain are licensed under GPL v2
documented
CapToolKit is to our knowledge the only fully documented system for capacitive sensing

Publications

Using Capacitive Sensors for New Exertion Interfaces, for Workshop Exertion Interfaces at CHI 2008
CapTable & CapShelf - Unobtrusive Activity Recognition Using Networked Capacitive Sensors, published at INSS 2007.
A Capacitive Sensing Toolkit for Pervasive Activity Detection and Recognition, published at PerCom 2007.
Thracker - Using Capacitive Sensing for Gesture Recognition, published at IWSAWC 2006.