As shown in Figure 8-1, the electrical interface is quite simple. Connect the OPT4001-Q1 I²C SDA and SCL pins to the same pins of an applications processor, microcontroller, or other digital processor. If that digital processor requires an interrupt resulting from an event of interest from the OPT4001-Q1, then connect the INT pin to either an interrupt or general-purpose I/O pin of the processor. There are multiple uses for this INT pin, including triggering a measurement on one-shot mode, signaling the system to wake up from low-power mode, processing other tasks while waiting for an ambient light event of interest, or alerting the processor that a sample is ready to be read. Connect pullup resistors between a power supply appropriate for digital communication and the SDA and SCL pins (because the pins have open-drain output structures). If the INT pin is used, connect a pullup resistor to the INT pin. A typical value for these pullup resistors is 10 kΩ. The resistor choice can be optimized in conjunction to the bus capacitance to balance the system speed, power, noise immunity, and other requirements.

Figure 8-1 Typical Application Schematic

The power-supply and grounding considerations are discussed in the Power Supply Recommendations section.

Although spike suppression is integrated in the SDA and SCL pin circuits, use proper layout practices to minimize the amount of coupling into the communication lines. One possible introduction of noise occurs from capacitively coupling signal edges between the two communication lines. Another possible noise introduction comes from other switching noise sources present in the system, especially for long communication lines. In noisy environments, shield communication lines to reduce the possibility of unintended noise coupling into the digital I/O lines that can be incorrectly interpreted.