For this experiment I decided to dive deeper into the EE side of things and wanted to get a feel (pun sort of not intended) for how it all worked. My goal was to figure out how to create a pressure sensitive button made out of fabrics, and hook it into an Arduino so I could program around the haptic feedback.
I thought it would be easy to find the parts and videos I needed to get to my goal, but was surprised to find few videos that took the viewer from start to finish. So, I decided to record what I learned along the way so that others may have it easier.
First, let’s start with the materials:
In short, Velostat is a resistive material and feels like it is cut out of a trash bag. The conductive fabric is a fabric that has conductive material woven into each strand. If you hook up each piece of fabric to a battery and touch those pieces of fabric together you will create a complete circuit. (Be careful, this can cause a fire when the wires spark around the fabric.)
When you place the Velostat between those two pieces of fabric you make it harder for the electricity to flow from one piece of fabric to the next (ergot “resistor”). Since the Velostat is thin and malleable, pressure from your finger onto the sandwiched materials increases or decreases the flow of electricity. This change in electricity is the signal you will interpret in your “pressure gauge”.
This video shows you how you put it all together. If you remember the principles above the rest becomes fairly easy. For example, you must be sure that none of your conductive fabric touches one another, so make sure your Velostat swatch is larger than you fabric swatches.
Now that I got that working I set out to connect the system to an Arduino so I could read the change in resistance on the computer.
Materials:
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