Input devices

Week 11 was input devices week. Sensors and actuators have been some of the exciting topics we’ve explored, and I’ve hardly scratched the surface here. For sensors, I wanted to work on a few approaches for my final project - sensors to detect a drum stick striking a rubber head. I fabbed Neil’s step response board fairly quickly and still have to work out one with piezo sensing.

The step response board works by introducing a signal in one sheet of copper, in turn inducing a signal in some other sheet of copper, the strength of which reflects distance between the two. I cast 2 circular disks of silicone to surround the copper sheets to build a rough pad / force pad. The signal strength was weak. I have a few ideas to improve this, but I’ll add documentation to the project page! Here’s the hello, world step response board:

See my project page for more!