I have an easy project, but can’t determine what hardware to use. Any suggestions on which controller to get?
It’s a glove, with a contact on the thumb, and 2 contacts on each finger. Touch your thumb to your fingertip to complete the circuit. There are 16 total contacts (2/finger, 4 fingers, 2 hands).
The wires should go to a controller, with a USB interface to my PC. I’ll write code in C or Java to interpret and process the contact closures. I’d like to keep them as discrete circuit closure sensors, rather than scanning rows and columns as is normally done with numeric keypads.
This is a one-off, so cost isn’t as big a factor as ease and time are. What’s the best way to achieve this? Thanks!
Fastest way to get this done is to get one of the Arduinos with 16 I/O pins, set them all to input and write a simple program to poll all inputs and send a data packet back to the PC when one of them changes state. Looks like the Pro Micro (with an FTDI breakout) is the cheapest one that would do it. The code should take a few minutes to write and you can communicate with the Arduino over a virtual serial port.
You’ll probably want to enclose it in something and add cabling, but that will be needed no matter which route you take.
If you’re looking for something off the shelf, you send me a Private Message. I make an industrial interface device (here: http://www.cedarlakeinstruments.com/pro … oducts.php) with 12 digital inputs and 6 count inputs (that can easily be made static) and outputs to RS232 (for distance; desktop users are running USB/serial converters).
lyndon:
Looks like the Pro Micro (with an FTDI breakout) is the cheapest one that would do it.
Agree w/the above post except to note (IIRC) that the Pro Minis, based on the 328 MCU, need a USB-TTL serial converter (a FTDI breakout/cable) while the Pro Micros (based on the 32U4 MCU) have the USB built-in. No need for any FTDI.
So the above recommendation is correct and even easier than posted !