8-channel capacitive touch controller with proximity sense
The Microchip CAP1298-1-SL is an 8-channel capacitive touch sensor controller that communicates over I²C or SMBus. It detects finger contact on up to eight independent touch plates and also supports proximity detection — meaning it can sense a hand approaching before contact, useful for wake-on-approach or backlight activation in control panels. The 8-bit resolution on each channel is enough for basic touch/no-touch discrimination and relative signal-strength measurement.
For volume production or dual-source planning, the CAP1298 family includes other channel-count variants, but the 8-channel 14-SOIC version is the one this order code specifies.