Sensing Part 2: Force Sensitive Resistors and Photocells

This lab uses a force sensitive resistor embedded in a stuffed animal to register serial input.  When the animal is squeezed, a red LED on the breadboard blinks in direct proportion to how hard the user squeezes to the toy: the harder the user squeezes, the longer the interval between blinks.

Description

In this assignment, I was inspired by the example made by Jeremy Blum in this video. I have constructed a soft parfume-ish pump. The screen is an empty PacMan board, but when the user presses the pump, a PacMan shape appears, and the size of the PacMan increases, as the pump is pressed harder. Also, the harder the pump is pressed, the  PacMan turns into the true yellow color.

Components

Description

For this assignment, I've used an FSR with Arduino and Processing to create a mechanism that displays a visualization of a user's posture, and prompts him to sit up straight when his posture slouches. 

Like always credits must go to the community of Arduino and Processing that contribute to the wealth of great examples all available on the internet. In this case I use once again used a Tom Igor sketch to get rolling with the serial portion of my sketch. Having this setup I pulled out "Processing, a programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists", by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, which is a fabulous book of how the visual logic of processing works.

Description

For this assignment, I wanted to create a physical demonstration of a "smart" parking spot accompanied by a graphical user interface that shows the status of the parking. I placed 3 photocells that measure the level of light in the ground along the middle length of the parking spot. As a car pulls into the parking spot, it will cover the photocells in the ground, decreasing the amount of light that reaches the sensors. The sum of the light of the three photocells was sent through the serial port to the Processing program.

Description

A chain reaction system of FSR - LED - photocell - LED is implemented on an arduino board. As an FSR senses pressure, a red LED turns on. A photocell by the LED senses the LED's brightness and a blue LED turns on.

The final step of the chain reaction is represented as telegraph signals on processing. It displays Morse code from the FSR telegraph.

Video Demo

http://youtu.be/IotCFvzf9ik

Description:

Parts used:

• 2 pots
• 1 FSR
• Arduino Uno
• Breadboard
• Lots of cable
• Cardboard pedal for the FSR

Description:

I used code to activate the Macbook webcam in Processing. The two pots control the X and Y position of the hipster glasses. And the FSR controls the camera shutter (which is really just stopping and starting the camera, while saving the frame to the hard drive).