Looking for material to detect pressure/hit

Thread Starter

Grukon

Joined Mar 28, 2018
1
Hi, I want to construct a device with the following properties. It would have a piece of cloth or tape (or similar material), that on impact from an object (let's say a golf ball) sends an electrical signal to an indicator, for instance an LED. It needs to be battery operated.

So, in a nutshell, I am looking for this material that on impact would be able to close a circuit and light up an LED. Is there such a material?

Any suggestions welcome.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
18,167
What will work very well is a PVDF film, metalized and polarized. This is similar to the diaphram material in an electret condenser microphone, and it works exactly the same as that. We used it in a contact microphone sensor.
BUT if your application can accept a fairly solid barrier that stops the golf ball or whatever, then there is a simpler and cheaper approach, which is to attach one of those PZT sounder disks to the back side of a plate that will be hit by the object. Connect the wires prior to attaching, and then attach it with double-sided tape. The plate should be thick enough and stiff enough to not be deformed by the impact, and the voltage will be over a volt in most instances. You will need to ground the plate to the common of your system used to amplify the pulse from the sensor. This approach works very well, I used it quite a bit. You will need to have a fairly high impedance input in the sensor circuit.
 

Reloadron

Joined Jan 15, 2015
7,501
Depending on the surface if the surface is for example a hard backing where an object like a golf ball will bounce off an accelerometer could detect a bang or thump vibration, be amplified, and trigger a level detector followed by a D flip flop which would toggle a pair of LEDs, for example Red waiting for a hit and Green a hit has happened. Use a reset button to reset. You could use a piezo sensor as the sensor. All depends on the backing?

Ron.
 

MrSoftware

Joined Oct 29, 2013
2,188
If you just want to know IF it has been hit, something like attaching a Piezo vibration sensor to a regular piece of fabric or rubber might work for the detection part:

https://www.kr4.us/search.asp?keyword=piezo&search=

Or depending on the use case, you could just hang a pair of metal screens an inch or so apart and stretched tightly, make them part of the circuit in-series with your LED driver. When something hits the front one, the screens will touch lighting the LED, then after a moment they will settle back down and the LED will be off.
 
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