MIDIsense Linear motion sensors
Linear Slide potentiometer

The linear cousin to the most common potentiometer. 10K-100Kohm is a good value if you can get the pot you want in that range, smaller values take more power, higher values will use more power when connected. These are all different from the "logarithmic"/"non-linear" sensors in that the middle of the sensor is actually in the middle of the range (linear pots are usually denoted with a 'B' marking). These sensors are best used in the Analog & Digital Input/Output board: just connect one end to ground and the other to the +5V pin and the slider/wiper to the Analog input port configured Analog Input.

Linear soft potentiometers / Ribbon controllers

 

Soft potentiometers and Ribbon controllers are sensors that are related to linear potentiometers except that instead of having a knob, one uses a finger to press down on the 'wiper' and make contact. Sliding the finger back and forth changes the output voltage. As a result, when the user isn't pressing down, no signal is sent and the input may fluctuate without a pull-up resistor.You can request free samples from SpectraSymbol. They are also often made by hand.

These sensors are best used with the Analog Digital I/O board with the port configured as a Ribbon input: the MIDIsense board will only send messages when the user is pressing down on the ribbon controller.The top and bottom pins go to ground and +5V and the middle pin goes to the analog input

May 17, 2011 20:07