It is very simple to understand by its name. The name indicates that the sensor is flexible and able to sense changes by the change in its flexibility i.e., bending.
A flex sensor will give values according to its bending angle and bending length and it is made up of some flexible material.
Why we need a flex sensor?
Flex sensor has great applications in our day to day life. It comes into the application when you need a sensor where you want to check the angle deviation, straightness, etc. This feature will help us to get some unbelievable outputs that can be used for angular displacement measurement and in making VR games and in some musical instruments.
It can be used in constructing a glove that simulates in controlling a game with our hand gestures and it will be of great fun.
Physical looks of sensor
It is a long 2 to the 4-inch flexible sheet with 1cm width and 3mm thickness. It contains a conductor wire in it. It is two terminal devices one is treated as ground and another one as a signal. The signal pin gives analog input to the microcontroller. Both the pins are not specified as it is a kind of resistor and resistor is a bilinear element.
Electrical specifications
-Flat Resistance: 25K Ohms
-Resistance Tolerance: ±30%
-Bend Resistance Range: 45K to 125K Ohms
(depending on bend radius)
-Power Rating: 0.50 Watts continuous. 1 Watt Peak
Mechanical specifications
-Life Cycle: >1 million
-Height: 0.43mm (0.017″)
-Temperature Range: -35°C to +80°C
Working with a flex sensor?
Flex sensor can be simply understood as a variable resistor that changes the output voltage based on the bending of the sensor.
Basic circuit diagram
It can be easily explained by its circuit diagram it is an impedance buffer and it is a single-sided operational amplifier. The outward voltage is controlled by the bending of the sensor and the Vout acts as an analog input for the microcontroller we use. It can be easily understood by the below figure.
Applications
Robotics
Gaming (Virtual Motion)
Medical Devices
Computer Peripherals
I hope you understood the working and applications of the flex sensor from this article. Next, I will be back with one more interesting module.
