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Flexiforce Pressure Sensor - 100lbs.

Description: This is a piezoresistive force sensor. The harder you press, the lower the sensor's resistance. Pressing hard, the resistance changes from infinite to ~300k. The sensor itself is thin and flexible, but the resistance does not change while being flexed. Resistance changes only when pressure is applied to the round area at the end of the sensor. Used as a presence sensor (someone standing), weight sensor, pressure sensor (impact testing), etc.

The overall length is about 8.5". Sensor comes with 0.1" spaced, reinforced, breadboard friendly connector.

This sensor comes in three flavors. This sensor ranges from 0 to 100lbs of pressure in the mega-ohm range.

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Comments 10 comments

Alx | about 4 years ago 1

How come the wire strip leading up to the sensor is so long? Is it easy to trim down or are there any other lengths available?
- EDG | about 4 years ago 1
  
  From the user manual: “The length of the sensors can be trimmed by Tekscan to predefined lengths of 2?, 4? and 6? or can be trimmed by the customer. If the customer trims the sensor, a new connector must be attached. This can be accomplished by purchasing staked pin connectors and a crimping tool. A conductive epoxy can also be used to adhere small wires to each conductor.”
CRobo | about 3 years ago 1

What happens if I exceed the pressure? Is it ruined?
- Tori | about 2 years ago 2
  
  According to the spec it can measure up to a 1000 lbs with a stronger feedback resistor, so it’s rated for at least that.
aeroponics101 | about 2 years ago 1

I am curious if this could be used to detect water pressure. Could I build a sealed end-pipe fitting to put the senor part inside an irrigation system to detect water pressure? Do you have a sensor more suited for that purpose?
aeroponics101
Iron man | last year 1

Is it possible to use this in a sealed container so that if i were to pump air into that it would tell be the air pressure. Or is there some other product that will do this. thanks for your time.
- FlexiRyan | last year 1
  
  The sensors are vented so you wouldn’t be able to measure air pressure in this manner. You would need to completely cover the sensor with sealant as even the substrate is porous on a microscopic level. In any case, the sensors are intended for tactile forces, not air pressures, so you may not get the results you’re looking for.
- RoboKaren | last year 1
  
  You could gauge both air pressure and water pressure (to answer post above) by using a pressurized bladder inside a rigid vessel and measure the pressure of the bladder against the walls of the vessel. Not very precise though.
tikka308 | about 11 months ago 1

Could someone offer some advise/guidance on hooking this up straight to an arduino (sans opamp)? Per the pdf datasheet, I have the top pin going to Analog 0 (the datasheet shows this pin going to an opamp, i believe). The middle pin is nothing. The bottom pin is “Vt -1v” which I tried hooking up to 5V and 5V with a resistor. I was getting analog sensor readings in the serial monitor, but they weren’t consistently correlated to pressure on the pad.
- tikka308 | about 11 months ago 1
  
  UPDATE: I figured it out. the “top pin” or left-side goes straight to 5V. The middle pin is nothing. THe right pin (or bottom pin) goes to Analog 0 (or any anolog pin you wish) but is also pulled low to ground with a resistor [I’m using a brown/black/green resistor which I believe is a 1mm ohm because it’s the only one I have for the moment and it works fine). No pressure yields a zero value. It’s very sensitive from 200-600. Hard pressure required to get above 600. Couldn’t very easily get to 1024 (the max). code is a simple analogRead on pin0.