Hello! I am fairly new to Arduino n all this! it looks extremely awesome so i wanna explore!!
I want to use arduino for my final design project. What i want is arduino to sense weight or force of people jumping, so when connected with Flash, a ball would bounce on the screen as well.
I dont need the sensor to be accurate, i just need values when there is weight (person standing) and when the weight is zero (person in air after jumping)
After some googling i found load sensors, like ones in digital scales (link below) would i be able to connect this to an arduino? and which type of arduino board should i be using then? or is there a more suitable -and easy to use- sensor for my project
dinamin:
i just need values when there is weight (person standing) and when the weight is zero (person in air after jumping)
If you use an accelerometer to measure vertical acceleration, you could detect when somebody holding the Arduino was jumping. Or you could use any form of inertial switch to do the same thing. (This isn't at all novel, hand held game controllers already do this.)
If you want to measure the weight on a floor, the simplest way I can think of to do that is to have a suspended floor which flexes slightly when weight is applied, and use that movement to operate a potentiometer. There are other ways to do it using pressure sensors etc but they seem likely to be more expensive and harder to get working.
The load cell you mentioned Load Sensor - 50kg (Generic) - SEN-10245 - SparkFun Electronics in principle would work you would probably need multiple cells to get the capacity required. Most load cells require an instrumentation amp to amplify the signal coming from the wheatstone bridge inside the load cell. I have had good luck using TI's INA122 for this type of application. The output from the instrumentation for each load cell would be wired to analog input individually. To read the total load (weight) you would read all of the load cells convert the voltage read to weight based upon your calibration data, add up all the weights after conversion.
There will only be one person jumping, and it's gonna be somehow imbedded in the floor, not held by hand.
Am not gonna be doing the programming part, got another team member, i wanna make sure that it is feasible -the whole concept- and what sensors or parts would work best, since i don't have a lot of time to experiment
wwbrown:
The load cell you mentioned https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10245 in principle would work you would probably need multiple cells to get the capacity required. Most load cells require an instrumentation amp to amplify the signal coming from the wheatstone bridge inside the load cell. I have had good luck using TI's INA122 for this type of application. The output from the instrumentation for each load cell would be wired to analog input individually. To read the total load (weight) you would read all of the load cells convert the voltage read to weight based upon your calibration data, add up all the weights after conversion.
