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LCARS - the look
LCARS - electronics 1st part
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LCARS - electronics 2nd part

Electronics 1st part

	You need one or more QT110H. The "H" is important, because we need the output to become HIGH when the sensor is touched. Yes, the signal can be inverted with a NOT port, but QT110 and 110H costs the same. Update: the QT110H is out of production. There is the QT118H that's equivalent for our purposes. If you have the DIP version of the IC, then skip the following steps, if you have the SMD version, as in the picture, read on.
	Take a piece of prototype board about the same size of the panel transparent area.
	Cut with a router or a small file a square of 3 by 2 pads, about at the center of the board
	Place the SMD chip as in picture
	Using the smallest copper wire you have, solder pins at pads as in picture

If you have a DIP IC, then start here.

	Here are the pinout of QT110H and the schematic. CS is 10nF, Rs is 470kOhm. There's no need for Rs.
	You should have something like this.
	Now, solder power wires (red for +5V, blu for ground) and output wire (white)

	Now, you MUST remove from the board the solder fluxant residuals. You can do this brushing the solder side of the board with an old tootbrush soaked with trieline or acetone (not the scented one used for nail polish removal!!)until there's no more fluxant visible. Let's test the board: Connect between white and blue wire a LED with a 1kOhm resistor in series. Anode of the LED must be connected on the white wire. Connect temporarily to pin 7 of QT110H a short wire connected to a small conductive surface. Power on the board (+5v on the red wire and ground on the blue wire), count 10 seconds (the autocalibration time) and then try to touch the conductive surface, the wire connected to pin 7, or simply the capacitor. The result should be as in THIS MPEG MOVIE :-)))
	Go to next part...

Click on the pictures to zoom.