Bare Conductive has debuted the Touch Board, an Atmel powered platform (ATMega32u4 MCU) that allows Makers to more easily create interactive and responsive projects.

“Use the Touch Board to change the world around you by turning almost any material or surface into a sensor. Connect anything conductive to one of its 12 electrodes and trigger a sound via its onboard MP3 player, play a MIDI note or do anything else that you might do with an Arduino or Arduino-compatible device,” a Bare Conductive rep explained in a recent Kickstarter post.

“The Touch Board project began as a way for us to create interfaces with our Electric Paint, but it can do a whole lot more. You can also connect tin foil, copper, conductive thread, Squishy Circuits, and more straight to the board. The list is long, but with 12 electrodes, you’ll be able to [conduct] plenty of experiments.”

Key Touch Board features include:

• Distance sensing – You don’t need to touch your sensors to use them
• No programming required – Unless you want to
• Arduino-compatible – Easy to program and works with popular shields
• Works great with Electric Paint – Or any other conductive material
• MP3 Player / MIDI device – Make a symphony of sounds
• microSD card socket – Change the sounds just by changing the card
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack – Works with headphones and speakers
• Lithium Polymer (LiPo) – Stand alone projects that recharge via USB
• HID capable – Turn the Touch Board into a keyboard or mouse

As noted above, the core of the Touch Board is Atmel’s ATmega32U4 processor clocked at 16MHz and running at 5V – the same as the Arduino Leonardo. It also offers 32kB of flash program memory and 4kB of RAM, plenty for most programs Makers might want to write.

This is connected to the micro USB socket on the board, allowing Touch to appear a serial port (CDC) or  keyboard / mouse (HID).

Interested in learning more about the Atmel powered Touch Board? You can check out the project’s official campaign on Kickstarter here.