Unusual Switch – Drink Me

For this assignment, I really struggled being creative, maybe because I’m fasting 🙂

I explored various metals in my room to discover a novel method for illuminating an LED. Eventually, I decided to use a metal straw as the conductor between two wires. By placing it in a cup and using my mouth to press the straw onto the wires, the LED lights up.

This is what my Arduino looked like:

Those two white wires were taped on the table, very close to each other but not touching.

I covered it with a cup to create the effect of drinking.

My niece volunteered to demonstrate this project. This is the LINK to the video

Lastly, this is my code:

const int ledPin = 2;      // Use pin 2 to control the LED
const int touchPin = 7;    // Use pin 7 to read the touch state

void setup() {
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);    // Initialize the LED pin as an output
  pinMode(touchPin, INPUT_PULLUP); // Initialize the touch pin as an input with internal pull-up resistor
}

void loop() {
  int touchState = digitalRead(touchPin); // Read the state of the touch pin
  
  if (touchState == LOW) {   // If wire A touches the wire on line 5, it will be LOW
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // Turn on the LED
  } else {
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  // Turn off the LED
  }
}

I really enjoyed making this switch, and seeing it work at the end was truly rewarding.