Hall-sensor IC for low power HMI applications

The AS5013 Hall-sensor IC is used in the Easypoint module, which consists of a mechanical stack incorporating a navigation knob, a magnet and the AS5013 magnetic encoder IC.

Its simple construction and contactless sensing technology give the module high reliability and it is designed for any kind of 360deg navigation input device.

The AS5013 is a complete Hall-sensor IC for human-machine interface (HMI) applications requiring low power.

This simplifies software integration challenges for joystick navigation in products such as mobile phones and other handheld devices - for example, MP3 players, PDAs, GPS receivers, digital still cameras, gaming consoles and remote controls.

The AS5013 single-chip IC includes user-selectable power-saving modes, five integrated Hall sensing elements for detecting up to +/-2mm lateral displacement, a high-resolution analogue-to-digital converter (ADC), an XY coordinate and motion-detection engine, and a smart power-management controller.

The XY coordinate registers and magnetic field information for each Hall-sensor element are transmitted over the IC interface to the host processor.

The HMI device also provides two interrupt modes (motion detect and data ready) and two operating modes: idle mode, with less than 3uA current consumption, and low-power mode, with selectable readout rate.

The low-power AS5013 operates over a power supply range of 2.7 to 3.6V and down to 1.7V peripheral supply voltage.

Specified over an operating temperature of -20 to 80C, the AS5013 Hall-sensor IC operates from a 3.3V power supply and is offered in a 16-pin 4 x 4 x 0.55mm QFN package.

The Easypoint module is available as small as 8 x 8 x 1.5mm.