Similar to reading the standard buttons, the capacitive touch buttons can be checked to see if they have been touched to perform some action.
Using the adafruit_circuitplayground.express library, there are 7 touch buttons: cpx.touch_A1 through cpx.touch_A7. The sensitivity of the touchpads is one value for all pads set via cpx.adjust_touch_threshold. Setting the threshold is not required if the default sensitivity is ok.
Below is an example of turning on NeoPixels green if pads A4 through A7 are touched. Pressing Button A clears the lights.
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2018 Anne Barela for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
from adafruit_circuitplayground.express import cpx
# NeoPixel blank out
cpx.pixels.fill( (0, 0, 0) )
# Set sensitivity of all touch pads
cpx.adjust_touch_threshold(200)
# Check for touch, if so light the nearby NeoPixel green
while True:
if cpx.touch_A4:
cpx.pixels[0] = (0, 30, 0)
if cpx.touch_A5:
cpx.pixels[1] = (0, 30, 0)
if cpx.touch_A6:
cpx.pixels[3] = (0, 30, 0)
if cpx.touch_A7:
cpx.pixels[4] = (0, 30, 0)
if cpx.button_a: # blank lights on Button A
cpx.pixels.fill( (0, 0, 0) )
Using Lower-Level Library Calls to Save Memory
The following code is very lightweight for reading the capacitive touch pads. It is perfect for when you want to add additional code such as Crickit or other library modules which may require a lot of memory.
Reading keys uses the following libraries:
-
touchio- contains the touch functions -
board- we use board definitions for the switches -
time- contains thesleepfunction to pause between readings
The code to set up four cap touch switches and print their values is as follows:
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2018 Kattni Rembor for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
import time
import board
import touchio
touch_A1 = touchio.TouchIn(board.A1)
touch_A2 = touchio.TouchIn(board.A2)
touch_A5 = touchio.TouchIn(board.A5)
touch_A6 = touchio.TouchIn(board.A6)
while True:
value_A1 = touch_A1.raw_value
value_A2 = touch_A2.raw_value
value_A5 = touch_A5.raw_value
value_A6 = touch_A6.raw_value
print((value_A1, value_A2, value_A5, value_A6))
time.sleep(0.1)
The documentation for touchio can be found here. There is not a current setting for sensitivity.
Page last edited January 22, 2025
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