Custom flex sensors
posted Jul 25th 2009 12:57pm by Zach Banksfiled under: misc hacks, peripherals hacks
Flex sensors, like the ones used in the Nintendo Power Glove, are generally expensive and hard to find. However, [jiovine] demonstrates that they are easy enough to make from spare parts. He sandwiched a strip of plastic from ESD bags between pieces of copper foil, and wrapped the whole thing in heat shrink tubing. The sensor is able to detect bends in either direction, unlike the original power glove sensors. His version had a nominal resistance of about 20k ohms, but by choosing a different resistive layer you could create sensors that are more or less resistive.
Related: 5-cent tilt sensor
there are also ductape+conductive thread diy flex sensors on the sidebar of that instructable. this one however, seems much more robust.