• krees
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2008-02-18
  • Posts: 4

Topic: squeeze sensor

Hi all,

One of the reasons I purchased a Chumby was for the squeeze sensor. Well, now I realize the "squeeze sensor" is nothing more than a toggle switch.

Has anyone modified their Chumby to have a real squeeze (pressure or force) sensor? The widget we want to build relies on it. Any help/direction would be appreciated. I've looked into the phigets, and that would probably work, but I'd like something that can fit inside the current Chumby casing, and I'm not sure the phiget stuff would all fit in there.

TIA

  • From: Singapore
  • Registered: 2006-08-26
  • Posts: 188

Re: squeeze sensor

The chumby used to use a "real" force sensor in it, but it was very expensive, and there is an issue with zero-point calibration (e.g., how do you know when you are not squeezing versus natural deformation of the bag over time).

If you want to just put an analog squeeze sensor in there, you can repurpose the battery voltage sensor (assuming you aren't using the 9V battery inside the chumby). You can tack solder a wire onto the input of that; it's a 12-bit A/D converter that you can use to gather what the amount of squeeze is from your analog pressure sensor.

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  • Registered: 2008-01-08
  • Posts: 172

Re: squeeze sensor

Weren't there also concerns about the squeeze sensor being a bit fragile? I even remember a post made by some guy that had a Foo or Katamari that had a dead squeeze sensor...

  • From: Singapore
  • Registered: 2006-08-26
  • Posts: 188

Re: squeeze sensor

The integration was a bit fragile, when we originally installed them on the prototypes they lacked a strain relief on the wires, so you could shear the terminals if you pushed it the wrong way.

7BAA 2E53 01C1 DCFF 497B  E7F0 9699 A303 78F0 D9B9

bunnie's Website