Oregon Scientific Taps Cypress Capacitive Touch Sensing Solution On New Radio Alarm Clock With Weather Station

CapSense Enables Easy-to-Use, Stylish User Interface; Decreases Time to Market

SAN JOSE Calif., August 17, 2006 - Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY) today announced that Oregon Scientific, a leader in consumer electronics and home weather stations, has implemented Cypress's CapSense capacitive touch sensing solution for the user interface in the new BARM699A radio alarm clock with weather station and radio-controlled atomic time. The CapSense solution enables touch panel control with only one component.
 
Oregon Scientific's newest self-setting alarm clock, currently a top seller at Target stores, sets itself to U.S. Atomic Clock and adjusts for Daylight Saving Time. The AM/FM radio clock provides weather forecasting and indoor/outdoor temperature using a wireless sensor. The clock's sleek design and electroluminescent backlight is accentuated by the touch screen interface, delivering easy operation by any user.

Cypress's Programmable System-on-Chip™ (PSoC®) mixed-signal array with CapSense technology implements the touch screen interface in the weather station. A single PSoC chip enables this reliable CapSense-based interface with smarter appearance and more robust operation than mechanical switches or buttons. The Flash-based PSoC architecture enables companies to make changes late in the design cycle, resulting in fast time to market and a cost reduction.

"As the leader in timing and weather products, we are always looking for innovative ways to differentiate our products, and the attractive touch interface enabled by Cypress's CapSense technology is an excellent differentiator," said David Fuhriman, Senior Product Manager of Oregon Scientific.

"Oregon Scientific's new radio alarm clock is another excellent implementation of the CapSense solution in the home electronics market," said George Saul, vice president of Cypress's PSoC Business Unit. "The clock delivers added functionality consumers can access with an aesthetically pleasing interface, while taking full advantage of the design benefits that CapSense offers."

About CapSense
Capacitive sensing is fast becoming the solution of choice for front-panel display and media control applications. Increased durability, decreased bill of materials (BOM) and a clean, minimalist appearance make this elegant interface attractive to a wide range of designs. With Cypress's CapSense capacitive touch sensor interface, a finger on the interface forms an electrical connection with embedded sensors, which work with the PSoC device to translate data about the finger's position into various system control functions. A single PSoC device can replace dozens of mechanical switches and controls with simple, touch-sensitive controls.

Cypress's CapSense solution offers system designers numerous advantages over capacitive touch sensor products built around modules and sub-assemblies, including increased flexibility, reduced board space and lower cost. Because of the unique PSoC architecture, designers can easily integrate multiple functions (e.g., LED drivers and LCD displays), in addition to touch sensing. The PSoC CapSense solution also delivers benefits such as easy serial communications using either I2C or SPI interfaces, the ability to implement both touchpad (x-y matrix) and linear slider applications with the same device, and the ability to make quick design changes using the flash-based PSoC architecture.

About the PSoC Family
PSoC devices are configurable mixed signal arrays that integrate a fast 8-bit microcontroller with many peripheral functions typically found in an embedded design. PSoC devices provide the advantages of an ASIC without the ASIC NRE or turn-around time. A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions with a microcontroller, saving customers design time, board space, and power consumption. Customers can save from 5 cents to as much as $10 in system costs. Easy to use development tools enable designers to select configurable library elements to provide analog functions such as amplifiers, ADCs, DACs, filters and comparators and digital functions such as timers, counters, PWMs, SPI and UARTs.  The PSoC family's analog features include rail-to-rail inputs, programmable gain amplifiers and up to 14-bit ADCs with exceptionally low noise, input leakage and voltage offset.  PSoC devices include up to 32KB of Flash memory, 2KB of SRAM, an 8x8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, and hardware I2C communications.

All PSoC devices are dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to create new system functions on-the-fly. Designers can achieve far greater than 100 percent utilization of the die, in many cases, by reconfiguring the same silicon for different functions at different times.

About Oregon Scientific
Founded in 1989, Oregon Scientific is headquartered in Tualatin; a quaint suburb of beautiful Portland, Oregon. Nestled amongst other Northwest technology giants, it is quickly becoming one of the world's leading designers and marketers of upscale personal electronics.

Oregon Scientific offers a wide range of products, from youth and learning electronics to sensor-free weather stations and sports and fitness. Its devices couple innovative technology with fluid design, and feature advanced liquid-crystal displays (LCD). Built from its hallmark of timing and weather devices, Oregon Scientific is expanding to meet the diverse needs of its customers to enhance the way we live, work and play. Consider Oregon Scientific's products as Technology Designed for Life.

Oregon Scientific is a division of one of the world's premier electronics manufacturers, Integrated Display Technology, Ltd. (IDT), based in Hong Kong. IDT was founded in 1977 and is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as IDT Technology, and on the Singapore Exchange as I-Com. IDT offers complete product development services to its OEM partners, from product concept to mass production, including custom LCD design, software development and product tooling.  To learn more, please visit the company Web site at www.oregonscientific.com.

Original text is here