What documentation is available and how should I use it?

What documentation is available? How should I use it? Where should I go first and where do I go from there?

Whether new to piezo haptics or specifically assessing a piezo driver, Boréas has released various documents and tools to help assess the technology and get any design started.

The best starting point is the development kit associated with the targeted product. Boréas development kits have been developed to be easy to use and evolve with your project. They connect to the Haptic Studio software, allowing to explore and test various haptics, and learn to configure haptic buttons. Consult the development kit User Guide for use instructions.

Once familiar with the kit, it can be used to build prototypes. Mechanical assembly is a key challenge in any haptic application. Starting development of a prototype using this kit avoids unnecessary hassle of electrical and software design at first. The driver board can be used separately from the controller board, and it can be controlled directly from another platform if needed. Consult the User Guide for instructions on using or adapting the hardware to your prototype. Using another MCU platform will require custom code; use the provided software development kit (SDK) for an easy and reliable integration – it was designed to be easily portable to most C platforms, and the provided API and code examples ease the learning curve.

When ready to custom-design a PCB, please refer to the product datasheet and application notes for guidance. An online BOM generator available for each product greatly accelerates the components calculation and selection process. The User Guide can serve as a reference for your design, but we still recommend using the BOM generator to make sure the components are appropriate in your case.

Applications notes are available and cover a wide range of design topics, from solving common integration issues, to design guidelines.