aid: sensel
name: Sensel
description: >-
  Sensel is a Sunnyvale, California touch-input company founded in 2013 by Ilya Rosenberg and
  Aaron Zarraga, building high-resolution force-sensing hardware — the Morph pressure-sensitive
  input device and the force-sensing touchpad technology shipped in laptops such as Lenovo's
  ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga. Its developer surface is not a web API: the Sensel API is an
  open-source, MIT-licensed C library (LibSensel) that talks to Sensel devices over USB/serial,
  published at github.com/sensel/sensel-api with C, C#, Python, Arduino, Processing, Max and
  Pure Data bindings and documented at guide.sensel.com. Sensel's intellectual property,
  physical assets and trademarks were acquired by Cirque Corporation (an Alps Alpine company),
  and sensel.com now 301-redirects to cirque.com/sensel.
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - pricing
  - repository-unlicensed
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
image: https://guide.sensel.com/img/sensel-logo-blue.svg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/sensel/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: harvest:secondary-market
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-08-26'
modified: '2026-08-26'
tags:
- Company
- Touch Input
- Haptics
- Sensors
- Hardware
- Human Interface Devices
- Embedded
- Open-Source
- Device SDK
- Music Technology
tags_raw:
- Company
- Touch Input
- Haptics
- Sensors
- Hardware
- Human Interface Devices
- Embedded
- Open Source
- Device SDK
- Music Technology
apis:
- name: Sensel API (LibSensel)
  description: >-
    The Sensel API is a C library for communicating with Sensel devices (Morph and Sensel
    sensor boards). It is a LOCAL DEVICE API, not an HTTP service: an application links
    LibSensel and LibSenselDecompress and opens the device over USB/serial, so there is no
    network base URL. The published surface is 44 senselXxx() calls covering device
    discovery/open/close, sensor info, scan mode and detail, frame allocation and reads,
    contact and force frames, LED control, firmware info and raw register access. Bindings
    are published for C, C#, Python, Arduino, Processing, Max (Cycling '74) and Pure Data.
  humanURL: https://guide.sensel.com/api/
  tags:
  - Touch Input
  - Force Sensing
  - Device SDK
  x-transport: local-library-usb-serial
  x-no-base-url-reason: >-
    LibSensel is linked into the host application and speaks to the device over USB/serial;
    the provider publishes no HTTP endpoint, so no baseURL exists to record.
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://guide.sensel.com/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://guide.sensel.com/sensel_h.html
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://guide.sensel.com/api/
  - type: SourceCode
    url: https://github.com/sensel/sensel-api
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: License
  name: MIT
  url: https://github.com/sensel/sensel-api/blob/master/LICENSE
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/sensel-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://sensel.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://guide.sensel.com/
- type: APIReference
  url: https://guide.sensel.com/sensel_h.html
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://guide.sensel.com/api/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/sensel
- type: SourceCode
  url: https://github.com/sensel/sensel-api
- type: Support
  url: https://github.com/sensel/sensel-api/issues
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.cirque.com/privacy-policy
- type: Packages
  url: packages/sensel-packages.yml
- type: SDKs
  url: packages/sensel-packages.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/sensel-status-codes.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/sensel-lifecycle.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/sensel-llms.txt
- type: Plans
  url: plans/sensel-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/sensel-rate-limits.yml
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-08-26'
  status: minimal
  artifacts_added: 8
  pass: local-v1
x-coverage:
  state: unreadable
  reason: no-machine-readable-spec
  detail: >-
    Sensel's API is a local MIT-licensed C library (LibSensel) that talks to Morph/sensor hardware
    over USB/serial — guide.sensel.com and the sensel.h header on GitHub are fully readable by a
    human, but the provider publishes no OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, GraphQL SDL, Postman collection or
    JSON Schema anywhere, and there is no HTTP endpoint for one to describe.
  evidence:
  - url: https://guide.sensel.com/
    status: 200
  - url: https://guide.sensel.com/openapi.json
    status: 404
  - url: https://sensel.com/openapi.json
    status: 404
  - url: https://sensel.com/.well-known/agent-card.json
    status: 404
  - url: https://sensel.com/
    status: 301
  checked: '2026-08-26'