«  
  »

The Shoulder

By , on January 25th, 2011

Our concept for the Whole Body Project was to use a sensor to measure your swing follow through. The practical applications for this concept could range from squash, tennis to golf and hockey. This is a tool that would be used by the athlete to train them to follow through their swing fully. this would ensure that the athlete wouldn’t hurt themselves by stopping short in their follow through and improves the shot.

Our initial plan was to use a stretch sensor to measure how far you were following though and use LEDs to display how far you stretched out. Unfortunately we lost the stretch sensor and we were forced to improvise.

After Reviewing what choices we had left we decided to create a pressure sensitive soft sensor using the sandwich method.

Here is our circuit diagram with out the breakout board or usb cable. I have displayed the soft sandwich sensor with a force sensor for this illustration.

The code that we used was a basic piece from photo resistor project from wt1 and adapted to fit our needs.

/*
BODY Language:
Wearable Technology 2 (GDES 3B44)
Code taken and modified from:
Sensor Project
Wearable Technology 1 (GDES 3B16)
Kate Hartman – Fall 2010
Example: Using a Stretch sensor to sense whether you are resting or stretching you shoulder.
Attach the sensor to the back of a shirt
Attach an LED or a buzzer to pin 8.
*/
int ledPin = 8;        // LED is connected to digital pin 8
int sensorPin = 0; // Stretch sensor is connected to analog pin 0
int sensorValue; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
void setup()
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // sets the ledPin to be an output
Serial.begin(9600);        //initialize the serial port
}
void loop() // run over and over again
{
sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); // read the value from the sensor
if(sensorValue>850){ //You can change the number here to adjust the threshold.
Serial.print(“STRETCH!!!”);
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); //Turn LED on
}
else{
Serial.println(“rest”);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); //Turn LED off
}
Serial.print(”                     Sensor Value: “);
Serial.println(sensorValue);
delay(100); // delay for 1/10 of a second
}

/*

Code was modified so that when the sensor value was over 850 the LED would go on and the serial readout would read “STRETCH!!!”.

Problems occurred while I was attaching the components together. The wire gage that i chose was much to small and as a result the wire became brittle and cracked at the soldier points making it difficult to complete without failure.

Conductive fabric sandwiched between cotton t-shirt material, and Velostat. wire soldiered to conductive fabric.

Conductive fabric ironed onto jersey, sandwich sensor then sowed into place to complete the sensor. all connected to the Lily Pad (+,-,A0)

Finished product in resting state.

Finished product while sensor is being compressed. The LED was used here to visualize to the class that the sensor has actual output, this is a primitive prototype for athletic equipment. Different signal output would benefit the user exponentially, a wireless watch application comes to mind a slight vibration with a delay could be implemented (golf) wristband with light or beep (tennis/squash).

Whole Body Project
«  
  »

Leave a Reply

«  
  »

Categories

Archives

A sample text widget

Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.

Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan. Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem, suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.