The depressed shoe shelf from Ellen Sundh on Vimeo.

Maria Paz is exploring the field of mood inputs by using your pulse as an input to control your environment. The sensor is sending out light that is reflected in the finger and back to the light sensitive sensor. As blood is pumping and flowing in the finger the amount of light received back alters. The output gives you the pulse of your body. Follow her progress in working on her final project Mood Tunnel on http://themoodtunnel.posterous.com/
Nintendo Wii introduced the Vitality sensor a few months ago, working as an input to measure your health and can be used in games.
LEDs translating human pulse from Maria Paz on Vimeo.
I am working on a project where I need to measure the humidity of the space. I want to know when the space has dried up and when it is wet or soaking wet. There are several different humidity sensors on the market but t does not absorb water but only measure the level of humidity around it. They are small and does not attract water. So I tried to build my own DIY version and my first attempt works quite well. Check it out:
Trying out the small Sharp GP2Y0D810Z0F IR sensor. It only detects when an object is 2 cm to 10 cm away. Great for detecting close up objects. The sensor is very sensitive so I added a resistor of 1 mega ohm to lighten up the power supply. There are 3 pins on the circuit board of the sensor: ground, power supply (2.7 V to 6.2 V) and analog output. More details on the sensor and circuit board on Pololu’s site who are the manufacturers of the circuit board. There is also another version of this sensor Sharp GP2Y0D805Z0F, detecting objects even closer with a range of 0.5 cm to 5 cm.

Serial monitor output
Magic Mirror Infrared detector
Building robotics and electronic installations with IR sensors can be a hassle when detecting objects. At the moment I am working with several Sharp IR sensor that I suspect interfere with each other, picking up each others bounce light. I saw this need neat little IR detection card that displays your IR light so you know exactly where your IR sensor bounce back on objects.
Investigating these cards further I found out you can use a digital camera to catch the light. The human eye can’t see the IR light but the digital camera can! Just turn on your digital camera and view your sensor through the camera.
Using my iPhone camera I could clearly see where my Sharp GP2D12 reflected back the IR light and I could adjust the IR sensor face the object more accurately.

Iphone IR detection
I saved this post card where you can record a message and play it. It works with a slim battery but I powered up with a 9V battery. This will be used for something exciting!

Recordable post card