Completing the tactile feedback loop with Haptic click
It’s difficult to talk after your dentist injects a shot of anaesthetic in your jaw. You hear your own voice, but you can’t feel your face. The words become slurred. It’s frustrating.
Typing on a touchscreen with no tactile feedback is no different. You see the letters, but you don’t feel them in the fingers. The feedback loop is slower, causing typos (evident by the popular use of the phrase “Please excuse any spelling: Sent from my iPhone” in email signatures.)
It’s not just the functionality, it’s emotions, too – remember the pleasure of typing on old-school mechanical "clicky" key boards?
The maturation Haptic technologies are enabling us to bring the tactile back.
The use of Linear Resonant Actuators (LRA) in the newest generation of Apple products did much to bring it into mainstream. The game will become all about simulating different tactile sensations with sophisticated vibration patterns.
With Haptic click, you can be on the cutting edge of User Interface development. Bring tactile feedback back into hardware design with the DRV2605 IC, a driver for ERM and LRA vibration motors.
The device includes a library with over 100 haptic effects. Different patterns of vibration can fool the fingertips into feeling all kinds of sensations, a solid surface can feel like a button for example.
One of the effects is audio-to-vibe, where the motor vibrates in tune with the lower frequency range of an audio input. Haptic click carries a 3.5mm audio jack to use this feature.
The extensive range of effects also means that the resources of the host MCU aren’t strained, although you still have the option of bypassing the library effects and directly sending a PWM signal through I2C.
See more details on the product page and explore the possibilities of Haptic technologies, starting from the Libstock example.
Yours sincerely,
MikroElektronika