Prototype Wiring Diagram
Circuit Explained:
The GY - 521 accelerometer board was used to simulate a crash crash. It acts as a car crash, because a car driving will have gradual changing in accelerations as it travels down a road, only on impact is the change in acceleration sudden. The Featherwing Power relay is used to counter unnecessary current draw. Once the Arduino interprets that there was a sudden acceleration from the accelerometer, the Arduino will tell the relay to activate which will allow current to flow through the solenoid creating the magnetic field. The magnetic field will clump the ferro-fluid creating the resistance. Unfortunately, due to the solenoid not being implemented a LED was used to show the current only flows when the accelerometer reads a sudden acceleration movement.
Next Circuit Iteration
FPGA Design and FETs
An FPGA is a field programmable gate array. A FPGA is a tiny microchip that connects logic gates through hard-wiring. These are much faster than Arduinos as it removes the processing of data.
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FETs are field effect transistors that are solid state transistors which are much faster than power relays used.
