Sometimes a button or switch is a great way to ruin the looks of a slick project. It needs something subtle… something lithe and elegant. Here’s what you do – use this capacitive touch sensor breakout board  to wire discrete wires and pads that act as your button instead. Then feed the signal from the board to your application!

This solution by Atmel (the same guys who make the brain chip in most Arduino boards) needs no microcontroller – it simply lights up the corresponding output LED, and drives the output pin “low” (to 0 volts).

Specifications

• Atmel AT42QT1070 “Q-Touch” IC
• 5-pad / button configuration
• Single-contact only detection (protects against accidentally brushing multiple contacts simultaneously)
• Stand-alone mode (no I²C on this breakout board)
• 1.8 to 5.5VDC operation
• Active-LOW outputs
• Output LED indicators