My project's is about adding counters and force sensing elements(for individual fingers) into the independent finger hand grip exerciser for LCD display. I have read up some articles relating force sensor with microcontroller, but still kinda lost as I am completely new in these. Sincerely hope someone can give me some useful guidelines. Thanks a lot!

 

Measuring force is actually a bitch.

You would probably do better measuring the mechanical displacement of the spring.
One idea is to attach a thin strip of material to each finger pad, the strip could have an array of slots that could be read
with an optical quadrature encoder sensor, then all you need to do is count pulses - all digital and easy.

 

Measuring force is actually a bitch.

You would probably do better measuring the mechanical displacement of the spring.
One idea is to attach a thin strip of material to each finger pad, the strip could have an array of slots that could be read
with an optical quadrature encoder sensor, then all you need to do is count pulses - all digital and easy.

I can't really get what you mean. Is the optical quadrature encoder sensor used for measuring the mechanical displacement of the spring?

 

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-9/strain-gauges/

 

Yeah, measure the spring movement with the encoder.