System and method for detecting the presence and type of capacitive loads

System and method for detecting the presence and type of capacitive load that may be coupled to a power driver. The system includes a detection circuit to determine the presence and type of load based on a measured characteristic of the load in response to a drive voltage. The characteristic may be the load capacitance as measured by the current flow between the driver and load. The circuit may include a differential amplifier to generate a current-related voltage, comparators to generate pulses when the voltage exceeds respective thresholds, registers to output logic levels in response to the comparators, and a microcontroller to make the determination based on the logic levels. Alternatively, the circuit includes a differential amplifier to generate a current-related voltage, a rectifier to rectify the voltage, a peak and hold circuit to hold the peak voltage, an ADC to digitize the peak voltage, and a microcontroller to make its determination based on the digitized voltage.