Techniques in Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing: An Open Source Approach

This paper introduces a new technique for creating Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing with open source technology for use in creating richer and more complex musical gestures. This new style of capacitive touch sensing is extremely robust compared to older versions and will allow greater implementation of gesture recognition and touch control in the development of NIMEs. Inspired by the Touché project, this paper discusses how to implement this technique using the community standard hardware Arduino instead of custom designed electronics. This sensing technique requires only passive components and can be used to enhance the touch sensitivity of many conductive materials, even biological materials such as plants. This paper also introduces a new Arduino Library, SweepingCapSense, which simplifies the coding required to implement this technique. Lastly, this paper will discuss its use in the project known as Cultivating Frequencies.