The capacitive switch developed by Mentor belongs to a family of innovative sensors. Designed as a SMD building block, it adapts effortlessly to its environment. Because it has been conceived for ‘no contact’ or ‘soft touch’ switches where depressing a mechanical button is no longer required, it can be integrated without any difficulty inside casings or can be covered by a plastic, glass or ceramic panel and screened from the triggering object. For this reason it is particularly suitable for use in equipment which is accessible to the public, e.g. self-service automats for food and snacks, control panels in lifts, or touch sensitive exhibition displays, and information terminals in railway stations, shopping centres, galleries, trade fairs and exhibitions. The integrated intelligence automatically adapts the capacitive switch to changed environmental influences. The switch is set up for fully automatic insertion into printed circuit boards.