Add a cool touch interface with your project with this microcontroller-friendly track-pad. We found an easy to use PS/2 track-pad that is easy to use and interface with. This track-pad is two-in-one: you can use it either in relative 'mouse mode', where it spit out finger movements as they change OR you can put it into 'tablet mode', where it give the absolute X and Y location of the point being touched. It will also return Z coordinates for how hard the user is pressing and a flag if a finger is touching the pad or if the finger was removed (so you know its no longer being touched). This device does not support multitouch, but it does have basic gesture support for 'tap' and 'double tap' on the touch-pad area. There's also two tactile buttons that act like a the two buttons on a mouse.

We thought this would make a great interface, such as for a lighting controller, music devices, or for drawing shapes. Since its capacitive, you can overlay the pad with a paper or plastic label and it'll still work.

Of course, we wouldn't leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck"! It's really easy to use with our Arduino library, simply connect using a PS/2 breakout adapter cable to any two digital pins and run our example code. You'll need two 10K pullup resistors for clock and data, as well as, of course, a PS2 connector.