piezo vibration sensor

Hello,

I’ve bought some piezo vibration sensors like this one:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ts_id=9198

They’re said to give up to +/-90V when the film moves…

But, I can’t get the sensor to ouput any voltage above 1V~… :shock:

What’s the trick ?

How must I wire them to get this kind of sensitivity ?

I’ve tried mesuring directly at their pin, then I put some resistors (tried 1M, 70M…) between the pins as said in the technical docs, but it doesn’t change anything… :x

I’d be grateful if someone could help me… Thanks !

Regards.

Nicolas.

What did you measure the output with? They need to feed into a very impedance; I’d use a scope.

Leon

Well I tried with my scope and with a common voltmeter… same results.

The technical manual discusses how to use a scope with them.

Leon

If I undestand well, then I have to use some kind of impedance adapter circuit before trying to measure the voltage without interfering with the piezo film.

I have some 74HCT374 Flip Flop CMOS and I see in the technical manual that CMOS are a good choice to interface piezo…

I don’t know what resistors values I should put in parallel and in series with the film, I guess I should try high values, hoping this won’t destroy my gates…

Thanks.

Nicolas.

They won’t be any use as they are TTL input. I’d use a JFET or MOSFET buffer circuit.

Leon