FDC2214 Frequency spectrum for electrostatic measurements of highly charged insects

Thank you for your fast answer. I described it badly, what I meant was: if I, as a human come close to the sensor, let's say the FDC1004, there is a capacitance change, one second later I move away, that will change the measured capacitance at the sensor again. Now I come closer again and so on, back and forth. This would result in a "1 Hz frequency" (probably not how one would call it, but that is what I meant). Because the FDC1004 has a sample rate of 100 samples per second per channel I could move back and forth something like 20 times per second, so there would be 5 data points per cycle and I could estimate the "frequency" of the rhythmic movement from the measurement. That is correct isn't it? In our application the insect moves also very rhythmically, It will move back and forth near the sensor in "frequencies"  up to 400 times per second. So with the high kilo samples per second rate of the FDC2214, thoses capacitance changes can be measured?

Thank you very much!

Best wishes Benjamin Paffhausen

Theoretically, it sounds pausible but that is something that you would need to prototype. We have not done anything like that before. The concern now would be what kind of capacitance change you will see with the insects. That will determine if you have enough margin to distinguish an actual target or just some kind of environmental or setup factor like drift. Repeatability will also be a concern.

Thanks

-David Wang

Capacitive Sensing Applications