Abstract: A capacitive touch sensor wherein the touch sensitive panel has drive electrodes arranged on the lower side of a substrate and sense electrodes arranged on the upper side. The drive electrodes are shaped and dimensioned to substantially entirely cover the touch sensitive area with individual drive electrodes being separated from each other by small gaps, the gaps being so small as to be practically invisible. The near blanket coverage by the drive electrodes also serves to screen out interference from noise sources below the drive electrode layer, such as drive signals for an underlying display, thereby suppressing noise pick-up by the sense electrodes that are positioned above the drive electrodes.

Abstract: A digital multi-meter (DMM) is described which can be inserted into a peripheral device card expansion slot of a personal digital assistant (PDA) to provide the PDA with DMM functionality. The DMM is configurable by configuration data supplied by application software running on the PDA. Configuration of the DMM may include, for example, setting measurement function and input ranges. The DMM internal circuitry measures input signals, digitizes them and supplies them to the PDA for display and/or storage. This allows for a data acquisition unit which combines a DMM with the computing power of a PDA. The PDA may be programmed to display or store data in a multitude of ways, depending on the requirements of a particular application. The combined DMM and PDA may benefit from various other functions of the PDA, for example wireless communication of data to allow remote data logging.

Abstract: A communications controller for an instrument connectable to a host computer via a bus. The controller is operable to control communications between the instrument and the host computer according to an address-based protocol for a dedicated bus specification. The controller is operable to respond to a received synchronization command having an address allocated to another instrument, by initiating a synchronization operation for synchronizing the instrument with the other instrument. A single synchronization command synchronizes multiple instruments, allowing a high degree of synchronization concurrence. An instrument for use with a host computer. The instrument includes a bus connector configured to connect the instrument to a dedicated bus segment for communicating with the host computer, and a synchronization connector for communicating a synchronization signal with another instrument. The instrument is operable to synchronize with the other instrument using the synchronization signal.

Abstract: A host controller (400) for interfacing one or more electronic devices (410, 411) to a packet-based timeshared bus, such as a system bus (402) or a universal serial bus (409), is disclosed. The host controller (400) comprises a first memory device (413) storing a sequence of predetermined transaction descriptors (TD) and a second memory device (405, 406) for storing payload data transmitted over a bus (402, 409). A transaction sequencer (407) is also provided that is operable cyclically to execute transactions defined by the transaction descriptors (TD) stored in the first memory device (413) so as to transmit or receive payload data in the second memory device (405, 406). By cycling through a predetermined set of transaction descriptors (TD) without the need to initially compile an operational set of transaction descriptors to process, the host controller (400) can operate as a simple slave device on a wide variety of existing buses.