The touchpads present on laptops are operational thanks to a PCB matrix of conductive pads and a controller chip that detects the area of contact.
A script has been written to automate the manufacture of these touchpads.
It relies on an OpenSCAD script to create a diamond grid that can be resized and exported as a DXF file.
The real work is done in a Python script that produces an Eagle-compatible board file for import into EDA packages for editing.
While this is the first touchpad we’ve seen tackled in this way, other similar projects have appeared in the past.
As the board file is just a text file, it can be generated using cut-and-paste techniques, exporting from a spreadsheet, or simple scripting to create arbitrary shapes and layouts.
