Week 8: Unusual Switch

Concept

For this assignment, I struggled to come up with the idea itself. I mean, a switch without using your hands is pretty tricky. I eventually came up with the idea of using an earring and a shoulder pad (of some sort). Basically, when you tilt your head (so the earring touches your shoulder), that’s when the connection happens and the LED turns off. It turns off because the whole idea is laziness. If I’m napping while sitting up, I tilt my head to the side toward my shoulder. So it makes more sense for the LED to turn off when I tilt my head, just like wanting to turn the lights off to go to sleep.

Code

void setup() {
pinMode(2, INPUT_PULLUP); //earring and shoulder foil
pinMode(12, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {

if (digitalRead(2) == LOW) {
  digitalWrite(12, LOW); // LED turns off when earring connects to shoulder foil
}
else{
  digitalWrite(12, HIGH); // LED is on (not touching)
}
}

 

Here’s the video of the working switch: Video Demo

Here’s the picture of the wiring:

Future Improvements

Overall, the idea was simple, but I came across some problems. One was the LED kept blinking without a certain pattern, and I wasn’t really sure why. Then i scratched everything and redid it, and it worked. I think it might have been a problem with actually putting the wires and components on the circuit, so I will try to be more precise and careful in the future.