Aimed at easing the process of developing devices that require HD haptics, Titan Haptics has unveiled a tiny board designed both for development and and for embedding into your design.
Back in June, All About Circuits shared with you our exclusive article about Titan Haptics’s launch of its Clustered Haptic Array motors. Today, the company is back with its announcement of what it claims as the industry’s smallest production-ready haptics development boards.
Dubbed Titan Core, the unit measures 29.49 mm × 20.32 mm and functions both as a haptics development board and production-ready module. It combines a fully-contained haptics PCB core and an Espressif Systems ESP32 chipset.
The Core is intended for engineers to do prototyping, mass production, and any engineering projects that need HD (high definition) haptics. This includes everything from game systems to wearables to automotive applications.
The Titan Core development board/production module is small enough to fit inside a lightsaber.
The board is small enough to fit inside a lightsaber. And while that may sound like a statement that’s purely for fun’s sake, there’s more to it. The required vibration actuation inside a toy lightsaber is exactly the kind of engineering challenge that requires HD haptics. For its part, at the June Sensors Converge show Titan did a demo of its Clustered Haptic Arrays built into the first ever HD haptic lightsaber.
A Tiny, But Full-featured Dev Board
An important feature of the Core is that it provides three discrete motor channels. That means it can support the connection of three motors at a time so that the motors can operate either independently or synchronously.
White the Core is optimized for Titan’s’ Drake motors, the company says that it can also drive a wide range of other haptic motors too—ERMs (Eccentric Rotating Mass motors) and LRAs (Linear Resonant Actuators), for example.
Importantly, the Core board is compatible with Arduino and ESP32 Arduino libraries. This should make it more straightforward for both beginner-level developers and advanced ones. The company provides sample sketches and effects available with the Titan Core Arduino library available for download.
Titan’s says that the Core also comes with preloaded firmware with sample effects running on vectorhaptics.org’s Open API. These enable for advanced effects creation and cross-device compatibility.
Connectivity and Extensibility
In terms of connectivity, the Core has built-in interfaces for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and USB. Engineers can also connect the board to any PC or smartphone via either Bluetooth or USB. This enables direct haptic control in real time, according to the company.
An overview of the Titan Core’s features and functions
Even with its tiny size, the board offers a surprising number of options for I/O extensibility Included are 11 GPIO pins, SPI, I2C, and I2S.
Here’s a summary of the Titan Core standalone board features:
3 Discrete haptics channels
Arduino Compatible
Onboard power management w/ LiPo charging via USB-C
3 W Dual-channel Class D Audio Amplifier + Dual H-Bridge
2-bit ESP32 Processor with DSP, DMA, ADC
I/O and connections on-board:
3.3 V - 6 V VIN
3.3 V OUT
11 GPIOs
2 ADCs
SPI, I2C, Serial, I2S
2 DACs
Wi-FI, Bluetooth, haptics, DAC and DSP capabilities
Titan says that the Core board is available either as a standalone unit or bundled in a Titan Drake development kit. It can be ordered on Titan’s shop website and from Digikey, with volume pricing available for production quantity orders.
All images used courtesy of Titan Haptics
Article published on 8/2/23 by Jeff Child at All About Circuits