Category Archives: resistive touchscreen

Resistance in Motion: What You Should Know About Variable Resistors

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Adjusting the volume dial on a sound system, sensing your finger position on a touch screen, and knowing when someone’s in the car are just a few examples of where you encounter variable resistors in everyday life. The ability to change resistance means the ability to interact, and that’s why variable resistance devices are found in so many things.

The principles are the same, but there are so many ways to split a volt. Let’s take a look at what goes into rotary pots, reostats, membrane potentiometers, resistive touchscreens, force sensitive resistors, as well as flex and stretch sensors.

Potentiometer

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Hackaday Prize Entry: MyComm Handheld Satellite Messenger

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We live in a connected world, but that world ends not far beyond the outermost cell phone tower. [John Grant] wants to be connected everywhere, even in regions where no mobile network is available, so he is building a solar powered, handheld satellite messenger: The MyComm – his entry for the Hackaday Prize.

The MyComm is a handheld touch-screen device, much like a smartphone, that connects to the Iridium satellite network to send and receive text messages. At the heart of his build, [John] uses a RockBLOCK Mk2 Iridium SatComm Module hooked up to a Teensy 3.1. The firmware is …read more

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