Barcode emulation with touchless gesture detection, e-commerce features in optical sensors
These sensors integrate six key sensing functions including gesture detection and Mobeam
barcode emulation for touchless gesture control and display management in smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices. Mobeam is a means of allowing the smartphone or other portable to transmit to a point-of-sale terminal, an infrared representation of a scanned barcode. This is a means of allowing the consumer to present a “virtual” coupon to the retailer, for example to secure a discount.
Advanced gesture-recognition software developed by ams supports a wide range of gestures, enabling touchless control for consumer devices. ams achieves this with a single package, as opposed to systems which use two spatially-sepated detectors to read gestures. ams’ package has four directional photodiodes to sense reflected IR energy, and the device converts this data into physical motion information including velocity, direction and distance.
The TMG399x gesture software currently supports optimised Android drivers, and a fully-qualified gesture library is available for the Qualcomm ADSP sensor core on the Snapdragon 6xx and 8xx processor family for four-direction gesture, plus ALS, proximity, and all the other standard features. The ams gesture software offers expanded capability to include support for eight-direction gesture, push button and taps, and work is in-progress to support other industry-leading third-party sensor hub devices.
The gesture engine features automatic ambient light subtraction, crosstalk cancelation, dual 8-bit data converters, power saving inter-conversion delay, 32-dataset FIFO, and interrupt driven I²C communication. It accommodates a wide range of gesture-detection requirements, from simple North-South-East-West gestures to more complex gestures, including simulated button pushing and taps. Power consumption and noise are minimised with adjustable IR LED timing and optimised gesture algorithms.
The TMG399x product family also integrates ams’ colour sensors. Accurate colour management and light intensity measurements are critical parameters for display management in portable devices operating under a wide range of light sources, including fluorescent, incandescent and sunlight. Proximity detection, composed of the IR LED and sensor, is optimised for object detection within 100 mm and can be used to simplify a product’s user interface, such as intelligent on/off control of smartphone touchscreens. The proximity detection is factory-calibrated to a distance of 100 mm, eliminating the need for OEMs to perform production-line calibration, and simplifying the end-product manufacturing.
To integrate e-commerce functionality into smartphones and portable electronics, the TMG399x Mobeam barcode emulation enhances the e-commerce capabilities of any mobile device by enabling smartphones to transmit barcodes to any one-dimensional scanner at retail points-of-sale (POS) terminals. IRBeam functionality allows the device to emulate other optical transmitters or provide advanced signalling using the internal IR LED. A versatile state machine along with 128 bytes of RAM allows for a variety of optical protocols to be generated.
TMG3993 and TMG3992 are priced at $2.50 (1,000).
ams; www.ams.com/Products/Light-Sensors/Gesture-Color-and-Proximity-Detection/TMG3993 / www.ams.com/Products/Light-Sensors/Gesture-Color-and-Proximity-Detection/TMG3992
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
