Using a Flex Sensor

Table of contents

  1. Using a Flex Sensor
    1. Step 1: Identifying your Flex Sensor
    2. Step 2: Create your Circuit
    3. Step 3: Setting up the Sketch
      1. Add your variables
      2. Setup setup()
      3. Creating a loop()
      4. Connecting to the Cloud
    4. Step 4: Compiling and sending to your Particle device.
    5. Step 5: Seeing your Variable
    6. Additional Exercises
    7. Find out more

This tutorial will introduce you to the basics of reading values from a flex or bend sensor sensor

Step 1: Identifying your Flex Sensor

Bend/Flex Sensor. Credit: Adafruit

Your bendlooks like this.

The FSR is very similar to the FSR except that it translates the amount of bend (instead of pressure or force applied) into resistance. The more bend, the less it resists electrical current. It’s a blunt instrument so its not ideal if you want to measure *exactly *how much bend is applied or movement has occured but it is very versatile and useful in a range of scenarios. It also comes in a variety of sizes, shapes and lenghts.

Step 2: Create your Circuit

The circuit, wiring and components are as follows:

Fritzing Circuit Diagram

Wire up your LED as you did the last time.

First connect any terminal (leg) of your FSR to A0. Connect the other terminal to power or the 3V3 Pin.

We need to include a pull down resistor in order to get accurate readings. Do this by adding a 10K Ohm resistor to the terminal connected to A0. Connect this resistor to ground (GND).

Spot the Difference

There is very little difference visually between a 1K and 10K resistor.

Make sure you use the right one.

A 1K resistor is brown, black, RED while a 10K resistor is brown black ORANGE.

Step 3: Setting up the Sketch

Let’s get the basics of our sketch underway. We are going to combine all of the guides to do the following:

  1. read from a sensor,

  2. put the sensor reading on the Particle Cloud,

  3. map that sensor reading to an output range, and

  4. fade the LED to correspond to the sensor reading

Add your variables

First we want to set a variable for the FSR and set it to map to A0 (analog pin 0). We also want to create a variable to store any readings that we take from the FSR.

We’re going to use D2 again for your LED, so set up a variable that maps to that pin at the top of your sketch. Also add a variable that we’ll use to track the brightness of the LED called ledBrightness;

// Define a pin that we'll place the FSR on
// Remember to add a 10K Ohm pull-down resistor too.
int flexPin = A0;

// Create a variable to hold the FSR reading
int flexReading = 0;

// Define a pin we'll place an LED on
int ledPin = D2;

// Create a variable to store the LED brightness.
int ledBrightness = 0;

Setup setup()

Now, let’s specific the basics of our sketch. We need to configure pin D2 as output.

void setup()
{
  // Set up the LED for output
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

Creating a loop()

In the loop we want to read the current value from the sensor, map that value into a usable range for output and fade the LED to reflect the sensor reading

void loop()
{
  // Use analogRead to read from the sensor
  // This gives us a value from 0 to 4095
  flexReading = analogRead(flexPin);

  // Map this value into the PWM range (0-255)
  // and store as the led brightness
  ledBrightness = map(flexReading, 0, 4095, 0, 255);

  // fade the LED to the desired brightness
  analogWrite(ledPin, ledBrightness);

  // wait 1/10th of a second and then loop
  delay(100);
}

Let’s walk through what is happening here. The function starts by using analogRead to read from pin A0. This gives us a value from 0-4095 stored in the variable named fsrReading.

Next we use this variable and transform it to a range between 0 and 255 based using the map() function. The new value is stored as the ledBrightness. This is then used to fade the LED and finally the sensing pauses for a moment and repeats.

Connecting to the Cloud

The final piece of the puzzle is to make the light reading available through the Particle Cloud. To do this we add one line to setup() as follows.

void setup()
{
  // Set up the LED for output
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);

  // Create a cloud variable of type integer
  // called 'light' mapped to photoCellReading
  Particle.variable("force", flexReading );

}

This creates a new cloud variable named ‘force’ which is mapped to our existing sketch variable called fsrReading and says it is an integer (or number).

Step 4: Compiling and sending to your Particle device.

Make sure the Status Bar has a device connected and the devices’s indicator is breathing blue. If not make sure your device is connected by USB and is getting a WiFi signal.

Press the Lightning bolt on the top left of the window.

You’ll see a message ‘Compiling in the Cloud’ and a few sections later your device should start flashing magenta.

Wait a few moments, it should return to breathing blue, and the LED should be off.

Step 5: Seeing your Variable

Visit the Particle console, navigate to your device and check to see the value is displaying correctly.

Additional Exercises

Get some practice in!

Exercise 1

Instead of fading the LED, let’s trigger it when the bend reaches a certain level e.g. 1500.

When it reaches that level have the LED blink 3 times fast.

Wait until the bend sensor reading returns to zero before starting again.

Exercise 2

Using example 2 as a starting point, make a basic game which challenges you to reach the most flex.

Set three levels of force: medium (>1000), hard (>1500) and extra hard (>2000).

If the player gets to medium - blink once; hard, twice; and extra hard three times.

Wait until the bend sensor reading returns to zero before starting again.

Find out more