njl-photolog
posted a photo:
I came across Plusea's work at the beginning of 2012 and was just blown away by this lady's creativity and resourcefulness -- seriously, go take a look at her work here on Flickr [
www.flickr.com/plusea/
] and Instructables [
www.instructables.com/member/Plusea
].
My order of Velostat arrived about two weeks ago and I've managed to play with it a little over the last couple of weekends.
It's piezo-resistive properties make an interesting and *cheap* alternative to
(more expensive) commercially available bend and pressure sensors. Though, it has a non-linear response to linear pressure. Or in plainer English, its resistance decreases rapidly at first, but the decrease slows as more pressure (or bending) is applied.
I figured that I putting six of these sensors in parallel might even out the response to bending -- kind of a voting system almost. Much to my surprise the result appears to be useable and the response more linear.
This is just a quick prototype to prove the concept. A mix of office tape, 30-AWG gauge wire, Velostat and part of a Ziploc snack bag. LOL