So I am a complete newbie here, never rigged anything like this before. What I want to do seems like it should be fairly simple though, but I'd like some ideas from the veterans here. I've found similar projects, but not quite the same.
http://m.instructables.com/id/Arduino-EMF-Detector/
What I'd like to is to make is a smallish battery powered device that senses the strength of the EM field nearby, and to translate that into some sort of haptic feedback the user can feel, either a small vibrating motor or very small varying voltage to the skin, whichever seems like it would use less energy.
Ultimately this would have thresholds too, so it wouldn't do anything under a certain range, and would cap out the motor speed at some level.
The whole point is to be wearable to augment a person, more or less, and give them a new "sense", being able to detect the strength of nearby EM fields. Possibly making two of these, giving two points of detection and the ability to locate the origin of the field.
So... Any suggestions on components I need?
An LDR (light dependent resistor) is very cheap and very good at wave lengths is the range of visible light. Or is it IR or radio (LW,MW,SW) gamma rays? X-rays? or ...
Mark
Oh no, far below that range. Just standard fields put off by common electronics. I also don't have much good indication on that particular range is, but some sources say it's a range of .2 to 4v and maybe something like 50-1000 hz?
Experiment for a bit with that EMF-detector described on Instructables, and you will eventually realize that the effect is completely useless. Furthermore, you can destroy inputs on the Arduino by exposing them in this way.
This is why I asked here, I do not wish to damage anything and want a semi-reliable device. Note, I do not plan to get close to any strong fields, just common electronics.
Note, I do not plan to get close to any strong fields
Just walking across a rug develops electrostatic potentials that quite easily destroy integrated circuits.
A simple experiment: Spread out the wires of your DMM, to an assumed antenna width of 1m. This should allow you to read EMF down to 0.01V/m in the most sensitive range, AC or DC as you like. Will you get meaningful readings? Can you locate the source of a field, by turning around and moving back and forth?