you might have heard of ghost detector or electrostatic field detector.it lights up an led when an electrostatic field is detected.basically it is made of a transistor or two detects negative on its antenna.i want to use it as a proximity sensor(because its the cheapest :P),when it has to detect a metal object connected to its ground.how should i interface it with arduino?
@robtillaart thanks for your reply,but this is capacitative sensing,not electrostatic.capacitative libraries use less hardware,but are more cpu intensive and involve complex algorithms(and what i am doing is already much complex).electrostatic,however simply outputs to adc,and is read easily.
something like that: Arduino EMF detector - YouTube ?
yes,very much like this.but i was thinking of connecting a wire to vcc and detect distance of that wire(or an object connected to it).would that be possible?
i dont know of any physical effect, that might detect such a little constant voltage...
i think u would need dangerous voltages, to detect an electric field with simple methods...
the formula for electric fields is
this...
maybe it would be easier to detect that object if it emits a weak RF field of 10kHz?
I built an electric field "sensor" a while ago....here it is http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,85752.0.html