Texas Instruments have introduced the industry’s first wireless haptic development kit. The kit consists of a small 32 mm square PCB containing a DRV2605 haptic driver chip controlling an Eccentric Rotating Mass motor (ERM) and a Linear Resonant Actuator (LRA) to produce vibrations. The DRV2605 has an integrated library with more than 100 effects licensed from Immersion Corp. A circle of LEDs can also be used to display visual alerts. The board will be useful to speed up development times when designing, and testing haptic effects in any application including watches, fitness trackers, wearables, portable medical equipment, HMI, touch screens, displays, or anything that needs tactile feedback.

Communications to the board is handled by a SimpleLink Bluetooth low energy CC2541 wireless microcontroller which communicates with a free iOS app running on an iPhone or iPad. The app allows you to play predefined library waveforms, create new waveform sequences, and assign waveform sequences to in-app notifications. The app can also be used to quickly configure the DRV2605’s internal register settings:  select between an ERM or LRA actuator, set the rated and overdrive voltages, configure and run auto-calibration, send direct I2C commands, as well as setup the board to respond to a GPIO trigger.

The DRV2605EVM-BT Haptic Bluetooth Kit is available now and retails at $99. For more information on the kit, visit www.ti.com.