Patents Assigned to Elan Microelectronics Corporation
  • Patent number: 10915209
    Abstract: A liquid detecting method and controller for a capacitive touch pad are disclosed. The method includes performing a first mutual capacitance measurement of sensing points of the capacitive touch pad to obtain multiple first sensing values, and then performing a second mutual capacitance measurement of the sensing points to obtain multiple second sensing values, wherein the first and the second mutual capacitance measurements using different frequency of driving signals or different sensing periods for sensing the multiple sensing points. According to the multiple first sensing values and the second sensing values, whether there is liquid on the capacitive touch pad can be determined.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 5, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 9, 2021
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Tung-Ming Yang, Hsueh-Wei Yang, Tien-Wen Pao
  • Patent number: 10914807
    Abstract: A point stick module has a sensing device, a rank unit and a signal processing device. The sensing device outputs multiple sensing signals in response to operations done by a user. The rank unit provides a rank signal to represent a rank of the sensing device. The signal processing device is coupled to the sensing device and the rank unit to receive the multiple sensing signals and the rank signal, wherein the signal processing device selects a parameter according to the rank signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 28, 2017
    Date of Patent: February 9, 2021
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventor: Chun-Chieh Huang
  • Patent number: 9267976
    Abstract: A circuit for sensing a differential capacitance includes a charge-storing circuit to generate a first output voltage and a second output voltage related to capacitances at two terminals of the differential capacitance, respectively, an operational amplifier to amplify the difference between the first and second output voltages to generate a sensing value, a first sampling capacitor having one terminal connected to the negative input terminal and the other terminal receiving the first or second output voltage, and a second sampling capacitor having one terminal connected to the negative input terminal and the other terminal switched to the output terminal of the operational amplifier. The second sampling capacitor stores a non-ideal error value to offset the non-ideal effect of the operational amplifier imparted on the sensing value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 2, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 23, 2016
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Chao-Chi Yang, Shih-How Peng
  • Patent number: 9081438
    Abstract: A capacitive touch panel controller has a memory and multiple driving signal output units. At least one transistor of each driving signal output unit and multiple transistors of the memory are fabricated by an identical semiconductor fabrication process so that the gate oxide layers of the transistors of the driving signal output unit and the memory are identical in thickness. As the transistor of each driving signal output unit and those of the memory are fabricated by a same high-voltage semiconductor fabrication process, the transistor of each driving signal output unit can be fabricated to provide a capacitive touch panel controller having high-voltage driving capability without using any high-voltage fabrication process and increasing the production cost. Due to the high-voltage driving, the SNR and anti-interference capability can be increased.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 10, 2013
    Date of Patent: July 14, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: I-Hau Yeh, Tsun-Min Wang, Chun-Chung Huang
  • Patent number: 9024895
    Abstract: The present invention provides a touch pad operable with multi-objects and a method of operating such a touch pad. The touch pad includes a touch structure for sensing touch points of a first and a second object and a controller for generating corresponding touching signals and related position coordinates. Moreover, the controller calculates at least two movement amount indexes according to coordinate differences between these position coordinates, thereby generating a movement amount control signal to control behaviors of a software object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 13, 2012
    Date of Patent: May 5, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Wei-Wen Yang, Chuh-Min Liu, Jian-Wei Chen
  • Patent number: 9024644
    Abstract: A waveform dividing method for a capacitive touch control device saves a first waveform in a direction, and then saves a multi-touch waveform in the direction when another object further touches the capacitive touch control device. If the multi-touch waveform is identified as having waveform overlapping, a second waveform is extracted from the difference between the multi-touch waveform and the first waveform. By calculating with the second waveform, accurate positioning of the objects on the capacitive touch control device can be achieved.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 12, 2012
    Date of Patent: May 5, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Tsung-Hsien Wu, Kuo-Ming Huang
  • Patent number: 9019212
    Abstract: A passive architecture for scanning a touch panel includes a master IC and at least one passive touch IC connected to the master IC. The master IC generates a command to configure the scan parameters of the at least one passive touch IC, and the at least one passive touch IC scans the touch panel with the scan parameters in response to the command.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 28, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Min-Jhih Lin, Chia-Mu Wu
  • Patent number: 9013398
    Abstract: In control methods for a multi-function controller, which includes a sensor having a ring operation region, the position of an object on the sensor is detected for generating a position information, and the force applied to the sensor by the object is detected for generating a force information. When the sensor detects multiple successive position information, which indicate that the object is circling along the ring operation region, a rotation information may be generated additionally. The position information, the force information and the rotation information are used to perform operation in various functional modes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 21, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Shu-Jen Chen, Chang Ou Yang
  • Patent number: 9007074
    Abstract: A circuit and a method for sensing differential capacitance involve using plural storing capacitors to repeatedly sample charges of the differential capacitance in an over-sampling manner, and storing the charges sampled in different transfer rounds into different storing capacitors instead of repeatedly transferring charges for a single storing capacitor, so as to collect charge averages about both inputs and noises and in turn effectively reduce RF interference and source noises.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 26, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 14, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Chao-Chi Yang, Shih-How Peng
  • Patent number: 8988362
    Abstract: For object detection, a two-step group scan to the traces of a capacitive touch sensor is performed, thereby dramatically shortening the overall scanning time and reducing noise effect. After all the traces are scanned by the pre-scan step to find out the trace of a touch point, the trace of the touch point and traces adjacent thereto are scanned by the re-scan step for more accurate positioning of the touch point.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 5, 2010
    Date of Patent: March 24, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: I-Hau Yeh, Chun-Yu Lin
  • Patent number: 8982074
    Abstract: A scan method for a touch panel has steps of: receiving a self-sensing frame; calculating sensing slopes between each sensing line and its neighboring sensing lines in the self-sensing frame; determining whether any sensing slope is larger than a slope threshold, and marking the sensing line if the sensing slope is larger than the slope threshold; and executing a mutual scan approach on the marked sensing lines to produce a mutual sensing frame without sensing point caused by noise. Further, the present invention also increases the frame rate since only a part of sensing lines need to be scanned.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 5, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 17, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Jung-Shou Huang, Chia-Mu Wu, Tse-Lun Hung, Shun-Yi Chen
  • Patent number: 8976121
    Abstract: A capacitive touch system uses two or more integrated circuits to simultaneously scan a touch panel in such a manner that each of the integrated circuits scans only a portion of the touch panel to retrieve a respective detected data by itself. All the detected data are used for computation by one of the integrated circuits or one other than the integrated circuits to determine a touch information. This approach enables axis intersect projected capacitance touch integrated circuits applicable to a large scale touch panel, without degrading the frame rate of a capacitive touch system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 31, 2009
    Date of Patent: March 10, 2015
    Assignee: ELAN Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Tse-Lun Hung, Jung-Shou Huang, Hsin-Shieh Tsai
  • Patent number: 8970523
    Abstract: A two-dimensional capacitive touch panel includes three electrodes made from a single sensor layer, with the first one of the electrodes between the other two of the electrodes to establish mutual capacitances between the first electrode and the other two, respectively. The mutual capacitance between the first and second electrodes increases along a direction, and the mutual capacitance between the first and third electrodes decreases along a direction. The first electrode is applied with an excitation signal for sensing variations in the mutual capacitances to calculate a position in the direction that is touched by an external conductor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 6, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 3, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Chia-Hsing Lin, Wen-Jun Hsu, Yi-Hsin Tao
  • Patent number: 8970521
    Abstract: A method for identifying touch object on a touch panel has steps of (A) reading m capacitance variations on a first direction, wherein the m capacitance variations respectively correspond to m sensed units of the touch panel; (B) determining whether a difference between the capacitance variation of a kth sensed unit and that of another sensed unit exceeds a preset noise ripple, wherein k is equal to or smaller than m, m is a positive integer; (C) determining whether the capacitance variation of the kth sensed unit exceeds those of the adjacent sensed units; and (D) determining a touch stylus touched on the touch panel when the difference exceeds the preset noise ripple and the capacitance variation of the kth sensed unit exceeds those of the adjacent sensed units. Accordingly, the method can correctly identify a range touched by a stylus from the sensed signals combined with LCM noise signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 27, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 3, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventor: Ching-Ting Chiu
  • Patent number: 8963065
    Abstract: An array of active pixel sensors and an array of sampling circuits of an active image sensor are divided into sub-arrays in operation so that a sampling time and a readout time in a frame overlap to each other to shorten the total readout time of a frame. In an embodiment, a first sub-array of sampling circuits samples a first sub-array of active pixel sensors during a readout circuit reads out sampled signals from a second sub-array of sampling circuits, or the second sub-array of sampling circuits samples a second sub-array of active pixel sensors during the readout circuit reads out sampled signals from the first sub-array of sampling circuits.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 6, 2012
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventor: Chun-Kai Liu
  • Patent number: 8963846
    Abstract: A cursor control method using a touchpad triggers an automatic movement signal for a cursor when an object moves from a first defined region into a second defined region of a two-dimensional touch sensor, or when an object stays in the second defined region for a preset duration after it moves from the first defined region into the second defined region, and define the automatic movement signal with the direction identical to that of the object moving into the second defined region, so that the cursor will keep moving in its last moving direction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 19, 2010
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Jia-Yih Lii, Wei-Kuo Chang
  • Patent number: 8952922
    Abstract: Two sensing units are configured as an exciter and a sensor connected to two trace lines, respectively, for mutual capacitance sensing from the capacitance units including these two trace lines. The two sensing units connect the two trace lines together to balance them to a same voltage level first, and then disconnect them from each other. Thereafter, the exciter connects the first trace line to an excitation node to induce a charge change on the second trace line, and the sensor senses the charge change to detect the variation of the mutual capacitance between the two trace lines.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 27, 2011
    Date of Patent: February 10, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Chia-Hsing Lin, Yi-Hsin Tao, Wen-Jun Hsu, I-Shu Lee, Shih-Yuan Hsu
  • Patent number: 8952896
    Abstract: A COB module of an optical mouse has a controller circuit and optical components of the optical mouse integrated thereon, so as to improve the problem with conventional optical mice that light path shifting tends to occur and improve the imaging definition. By disposing a button and wheel mechanism independently outside the COB module, the optical mouse has significantly improved flexibility in design, lower cost related to design alteration, and relaxed requirements on alignment and correction during production.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 5, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 10, 2015
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventor: Chin-Lin Liu
  • Patent number: 8907908
    Abstract: A method for identifying multiple touch objects has steps of reading at least one touched cluster to be identified in a sensing frame, determining a range of each one of the at least one touched cluster to be identified, comparing the range of each touched cluster to be identified with a first preset division range, if the range of the touched cluster to be identified exceeds the first preset division range, reducing a sensing value of each one of at least one middle sensing point within the first touched cluster to be divided, determining a count of center sensing points of each first touched cluster to be divided, and dividing the first touched cluster to be divided containing multiple center sensing points. Accordingly, the present invention correctly identifies multiple touch objects from a single touched cluster arising from an excessively large line-to-line space.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 2, 2012
    Date of Patent: December 9, 2014
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Tsz-Hsuan Chao, Sheng-Tsai Huang
  • Patent number: 8884909
    Abstract: A control circuit and a control method for a capacitive touch panel are provided. Therein, while a scanning signal charges and discharges each trace on the capacitive touch panel, a signal in phase with the scanning signal is provided to traces adjacent to the scanned trace or a ground layer under the scanned trace so as to lower parasitic capacitances between the scanned trace and the ground layer or other traces, thereby decreasing a base capacitance of the capacitive touch panel and enhancing a sensing result of the control circuit as well as providing a shielding effect and reducing noise interference so that the capacitive touch panel has improved performance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 25, 2009
    Date of Patent: November 11, 2014
    Assignee: Elan Microelectronics Corporation
    Inventors: Chun-Chung Huang, Tsun-Min Wang, Chun-Yu Lin