Description

Many Tibetan Buddhists hang prayer flags in the breeze, believing that the wind will carry prayers of peace and compassion all over the world. In my project, I attached a prayer flag to a DC Motor, and when you press the FSR the prayer flag spins, so you could use the FSR sort of like Catholics use a rosary, to send prayers out. It isn't really very meditative, though!

There was a little problem in that the diode only seemed to work for a little while (like there was too much power for it, or something), so after a bit the flag would just start spinning regardless of the FSR readings. That's why, in the picture, the flag is spinning even though no one is pressing the FSR.

Components

Battery pack
diode
FSR
Battery pack with 2 batteries
wires

Arduino Code

/*
* Katherine Ahern
* this is the same as potControlsMotor,
* but I attached an FSR instead of the pot
* modified version of AnalogInput
* by DojoDave
* http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogInput
* Modified again by dave
*/

int fsrPin = 0; // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int motorPin = 9; // select the pin for the Motor
int val = 0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
val = analogRead(fsrPin); // read the value from the sensor, between 0 - 1024
Serial.println(val);
analogWrite(motorPin, val/4); // analogWrite can be between 0-255
}