If you want to track a snail, you need a tiny instrumentation package. How do you create an entire data acquisition system, including sensors, memory, data processing and a power supply, small enough ...

Everyone is familiar with pinwheels, and few of us haven’t crafted one from a square of paper, a stick, and a pin. Pinwheels are pretty optimized from a design standpoint, and are so cheap and easy to ...

A typical reflective object sensor consists of an infrared light emitter diode (IRED) and an NPN silicon phototransistor mounted side-by-side on parallel axes in a compact black plastic housing. The ...

Sensors help microprocessor-based systems find their bearings. Where would embedded systems be without them? Sensors provide the windows through which microprocessor-based systems can observe their ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances, DOI 10.29026/oea.2022.210101 discusses a highly sensitive and fast response optical strain sensor. The authors of this article propose a highly ...

Inductive sensors are non-contact proximity sensors that detect ferrous targets, ideally ones made of mild steel thicker than one millimeter. They consist of four major components: a ferrite core with ...

Figure 1a shows a slotted optical switch. An LED is mounted in a plastic housing, facing a phototransistor, but separated by a gap. If something moves into the gap, it blocks the light path between ...