3:00: Assignment Review
3:15: Voltage Divider Sensors
Review SparkFun's pages on Pulse Width Modulation, Analog to Digital Conversion, Voltage Dividers, Capacitors, and Series and Parallel Circuits.
Read chapters 5 and 6 of Making Things Move
3:00: Capacitive Sensors
3:30: Sensor fabrication workshop: make a capacitance-based sensor. Discuss appplications and calibration.
Fabricate and calibrate sensors. Consider sensing needs for final project.
Make sure you are comfortable with multi-tasking with the Arduino language (or see the recording). Additionally, a recording of last year's programming basics workshop is here.
1. Make a capacitive sensor to measure a physical quantity with your microcontroller.
2. Select another sensor of your choosing (temperature, microphone, etc.).
3. Calibrate each sensor and visualize data in the form of a table or graph. Discuss the relationship between the signals recorded by your microcontroller and the physical quantities that you're measuring.
Examples: Dan (thermistor), Silvia (IR phototransistor), Kathryn (piezo sensor).
Sensors in the Lab
Input device page from "HTMAA"
MIT course "Adventures in Sensing"