Week 2: Simple Switch System [LAB]

Sept 17, 2018

For this weeks lab of creating a simple switch system, I wanted to create a switch system that changes the brightness of the LEDs upon contact of each other. Rather than creating a simple break point between a closed circuit for a switch (so that the LED turns on and off), I wanted to see if I can change the value of resistance being used in the circuit to increase / decrease the current passing through the LEDs. After playing around with circuits, I came up with what I am calling "high five rings". The LEDs on the rings, when they come to contact with one another, will become brighter than they are when not in contact.

Materials used:

Illustrated diagram of circuits for the high five rings Illustrated diagram of circuits for the high five rings

Above, the image on the left is my illustration of the circuit that I created for the rings. The exposed wire connected to the 5V power comes in contact to another piece of exposed wire connected between the 220 and 10K resistors and brightens the LEDs. The image on the above right is a circuit diagram of one of the rings.

Image of final version of high five rings

Above image is a picture of the finished "product". Couple of things to note here is that the "exposed wire" part of diagram had to be covered with conductive tape for two reasons: 1) to fix its position and 2) to increase the area of contact. Additionally, fabric tape was used to separate out different parts of wiring of the ring that was exposed.

Below is a video documentation of how the interaction of the high five rings works:

Stuff I learned:

Stuff I'm still not sure of:

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