Your suggestion has merit. I have a couple of old Atari computers in boxes somewhere, that are expendable and can be used to cobble something together at the game port. I'll use BASIC, or C to rig the gameport to detect the "fire" button.
What I have been using for the last two years was a manual system which involved fine iron filings in a null area between two magnetic fields. The platform is shielded against vibration and air currents. By and large it works quite well, but is only a one shot. About as fine control as a brick to hammer in a pin...
Concentrating move the filings towards one or the other magnets, but I wanted something that could take into account moving the magnets further away from each other and various other factors.
I am now considering bonding some iron filings on a single human hair suspended down with conductors to the left and right of the hair. When the hair is pulled towards the magnet, it will make a "fire" button impulse sent to the program and the stats will be saved to a disk file.
Thanks for the idea of the gameport.
Regards,
CC
----------------------------------------------------
Thanks for
---- you wrote:
> Hi CC!
>
> Lots of ways to do this but something cheap and easy is using a
> gameport as it has one I/O port (for the fire button) and an A/D -256
> up to +256 assigned voltage values as are produced from a moving
> potentiometer.
>
> The main question is do you just want to measure one discrete movement
> or a series of them? That what will determine what kind of sensor or
> sensor array you need. I'd imagine with telekinesis, you just need
> that one shot.
>
> The other question that might be a factor in success is interference
> as in would a light or energy source used in the sensor affect the
> experiment?
>
> I would use an IR led and detector, creating a beam that the object
> must break. You could also use something more exotic like Kynar piezo
> film which can detect pressure and it would act like a variable sensor
> as the object slid across it, but that's really more than you need.
>
> Microswitches come in a wide assortment of styles which have various
> levels of pressure needed to trip the switch, some have leaf arms but
> I don't think this would work for you as you need something with no
> resisting pressure and no trigger window since you are talking 1,000th
> of an inch or so.
>
> The above are referring to physical movement, moreso than weight
> changes.
>
> I would use an optical sensing system because it is non-contact, you
> can vary the sensitivity and trigger window.
>
> A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to visit a dream lab where
> they do sleep disorder and other studies. They took a bicycle inner
> tube and slit it to make a giant rubber strip, then connected a
> poteniometer to it and place it around the subjects chest.
>
> As the subject breathed in and out, it triggered this switch and
> recorded the time, so you could see how MUCH the chest expanded and
> contracted as well as how often....It thought it was a cool redneck
> way to collect this data into a file as the system monitored the
> client sleeping.
>
> ---c_costigan@canada.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > I'd like to know if anyone has a url for telekinesis resources on
> the net. I've been experimenting for a number of years and have had
> some small success. The net has some stuff that is a little too
> esoteric for my purposes. What is required is an experimenter's type
> of device.
> >
> > Chiefly, what I'm looking for is a homebrew device that can
> electronically detect a change in mass, density or location (i.e. if
> it moved a thousandth of an inch, etc) of a specific object.
> >
> > I'm a computer programmer, not an engineer or electronics person, so
> if I can't find something, I'll probably have to figure out how to
> build one.
> >
> > CC
> >
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