Pressure Mapping Sensor Mat

[imsolidstate] built his own pressure sensitive mat. It utilizes two discs of copper clad board with a piece of foam in between for each of 64 sensors. As the foam gets compressed, the capacitance between the two pieces of copper changes, a measurement that is fairly easy to make with an analog to digital converter. The mat is being used to measure how well a horse saddle fits the animal. Data is read in through a serial port and then mapped using Excel. This prototype proves that the concept works but [imsolidstate] mentions that there’s room to improve the sensitivity and that there could be more noise filtering incorporated into the design.

18 thoughts on “Pressure Mapping Sensor Mat

  1. Nice! The horses will thank you for it.

    I’m guessing each “load cell” would need to be
    calibrated, each with its own look up table (pressure v. resistance) to compensate for variations between cells.

  2. This is pretty useless without a clear idea what sort of foam is being used here. “I think the foam is polyurethane open-cell foam but I’m not sure.” is not very informative.

  3. Nice concept – not sure the results are any where near accurate – nor will they remain consistent over time using foam as a spacer – nor will they hold calibration (even if you could calibrate them).

  4. This has very important medical applications too! a device such as this, used in orthopedic applications, goes for nearly $10k !

    see here – http://www.apostherapy.co.uk/

    these guys use a similar device to analyze your posture and adjust special shoes accordingly. it works well, but costs a fortune.
    about time this was open source :(

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