Introduction: How to Make Spring Vibration Sensor at Home!
I was working on a new project which involves a Spring Vibration sensor aka the "poor man's" accelerometer/motion sensor! These spring-vibration switches are high sensitivity non-directional vibration induced trigger switches. Inside is a very soft spring coiled around a long metal pin. When the switch is moved, the spring touches the center pole to make contact. So, when there's motion, the two pins will act like a closed switch. When everything is still, the switch is open. Great for basic projects and wearables!
But I don't have it at the moment so I thought why not make one yourself, So in this tutorial, I'll show you how you can make your own spring vibration sensor.
So without any further ado lets get started!
Supplies
Step 1: Working Principle
The vibration sensor is the most simple senor you can possibly think of, it has one resistor whose value can be 10k ohm and the spring-like structure surrounding it, one end of the sensor is one lead of the resistor and another end of the sensor is the spring, 2nd lead of the resistor is in the air not connected anywhere, so if I connect one end of the sensor to 5V and another end to digital pin of Arduino, every time there is vibration spring will vibrate and spring will touch the resistor hence we get 5V at the input of our Arduino and that’s the working principle of vibration sensor which is basically a simple switch!
Now that we know how the sensor works let’s see how to make one.
Step 2: Making Spring
To make one you need enameled copper wire, if you don’t have one you can even use single stand wire it will work just remove the coating, now measure about 25cm of copper wire and cut it to its length after which we will use some sandpaper and a plyer to remove the enameled coating from copper wire exposing it.
Once that is done using a bolt with 3mm diameter, make spring of about 3cm length in length.
Step 3: Adding Resistor & Shrink Tube
After you are done making spring you can chop off the one end of spring and now take a 10k ohm resistor and place it inside the spring just Make sure it doesn’t touch the copper spring after that you can fix it in place using some hot glue or a two-component adhesive.
Now that is done you can use some heat shrinking tube to cover the sensor and you have made a sensor!
Step 4: Test the Sensor!
To test the sensor I used an Arduino Nano, simply solder one end to 5V and another end to Digital pin 2 of Arduino after which I wrote this simple code which senses every time sensor gets vibrated and as you can see it works like charm!
If you face a sensor getting trigger quite often or not getting trigger at all, try adjusting the resistor position and use less heat shrink tube or not at all.
You can find the code below for testing.
Attachments
Step 5: You Did It!
You did it you made your own vibration sensor! I’ll be using this sensor in my upcoming project so don’t miss that
So that's pretty much it for this tutorial guys, If you like my work consider checking out my YouTube channel for more awesome stuff: https://www.youtube.com/NematicsLab
You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, etc for upcoming projects
https://www.facebook.com/NematicsLab/
