Collaborate Disseminate
If you need a potentiometer for a project, chances are pretty good that you’re not going to pick up a pencil and draw one. Then again, if you’re teaching someone …read more Continue reading A Classroom-Ready Potentiometer From Pencil and 3D Prints
Two researchers of Responsive Environments, MIT Media Lab, have put to together a device that is an amazing array of musical instruments squeezed into one flexible package. Made using seven layers of fabrics with different electrical properties, the result can be played using touch, proximity, pressure, stretch, or with combinations of them. Using a fabric-based keyboard, ribbon-controller, and trackpad, it can be played as a one-octave keyboard, a theremin, and in ways that have no words, such as stretching while pressing keys. It can also be folded up and stuffed into a case along with your laptop, and care has …read more
If you have a traditional regulated power supply that you want to make adjustable, you’ll have somewhere in the circuit a feedback line driven by a potential divider across the output. That divider will probably incorporate a variable resistor, which you’ll adjust to select your desired voltage.
The problem with using a standard pot to adjust something like a power supply is that a large voltage range is spread across a relatively small angle. The tiniest movement of the shaft results in too large a voltage change for real fine-tuning, so clearly a better means of adjustment is called for. …read more
Resistors are one of the fundamental components used in electronic circuits. They do one thing: resist the flow of electrical current. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way for a resistor to work. In previous articles I talked about fixed value resistors as well as variable resistors.
There is one other major group of variable resistors which I didn’t get into: resistors which change value without human intervention. These change by environmental means: temperature, voltage, light, magnetic fields and physical strain. They’re commonly used for automation and without them our …read more
Continue reading Automatic Resistance: Resistors Controlled by the Environment
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.
Continue reading Resistance in Motion: What You Should Know About Variable Resistors
