Capacitive touch

Touch is one of our basic senses. We touch various objects with our fingers to feel them and obtain information about their texture, temperature, and other surface properties. On the Micro:bit, round pins 0, 1, and 2 can be touched to provide input from the human touch. These pins are available on both versions of the Micro:bit. They work on the principle of resistive touch. When we touch these pins, a connection to the ground of the Earth is established through our fingers. Therefore, the ground is always required while providing inputs from these pins.

In this chapter, we will learn about the touch sensor, which is only supported on V2. The sensor is present on the front side of the Micro:bit. Its location is above the LED matrix, as shown in Figure 14.1:

Figure 14.1 – Capacitive touch sensor on the Micro:bit V2

Any capacitive surface activates the capacitive touch sensor. Our skin is a capacitive surface as we access modern smartphones...