Sensor suggestion for wand application

Hi,

I am envisioning an interaction project where I would like to have a hand held wand that can be used to whack surfaces or objects. I would like the wand to be able to identify what is being whacked and then give some appropriate output, for example playing a sound.

I was trying to think about what sensors would be appropriate for the wand and what to use to make the objects/surfaces identifiable with an adequate response rate. I was investigating RFID with a reader in the wand and tags in the objects, but it seems that it might be too slow. I am looking for the fastest response rate possible.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Umesh

You could use a hall effect sensor and a magnet, as long as the positions don't change.

The hall effect sensor that was suggested sounds like a good idea.

A capacitive sensor could work too (e.q. Atmel Q-touch). You would need
a conductor in the wand and the handle.

You may be able to some sort of piezo or microphone if the "whack" is hard enough.

(* jcl *)

www: http://www.wiblocks.com
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Thanks for your suggestions. I was wondering if these options would allow me to uniquely identify each object. Let me use a more concrete example. Say I had 5 objects - say flat cards. With each card on a table, I wanted to play a different tone when a specific card is whacked (like a crude instrument). The wand is connected to a computer that plays the tone, so that the wand needs to know which specific card is whacked. The whack trigger can come from a force sensor in the wand itself, but the wand needs to know which tone to play i.e. by identifying the card and looking up the mapping from card id to tone.