Getting Force Images from Multiple Snowboards

The Snowboard can work with 10x16 matrix sensor. The size of this sensor is 50.8 x 76.2 (mm) and sufficient for general tactile sensing application. However, for a tactile sensing application such as foot pressure mapping, a larger matrix sensor is desirable. We are currently selling a large matrix sensor for this purpose. The Snowboard definitely works with this large sensor but resolution is still 10x16. So, we are developing  a controller to support higher resolution for the large sensor which will be available 2Q.

Before the advanced controller is available, we would like to give you a simple tutorial to virtually build a large sensor with the Snowboard and the Matrix Sensor 1610. This is possible since you can run multiple instances of the latest Snowboard application.

Materials
To begin with you need:
2 x Snowboard
2 X Matrix Sensor 1610

Step 1
Connect the two Snowboards to your PC.

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Step 2
Open Control Panel and know the ports to which the Snowboards are attached.

In this example, the Snowboards are recognized as Arduino Leonardo and assigned COM11 and COM23.

Step 3
Run snowforce.exe. You just double click snowforce.exe and then do it again.

You can find download the latest Snowboard software here

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Step 4
For each instance of snowforce.exe, open an appropriate port and click start button.

That's all, now you can get force image data from both sensors at a same time. By this way, you now get a 101.6 x 76.2 (mm) tactile sensor.

If you apply this tutorial with 4 Snowboards, the overall size of the sensor is virtually 101.6 x 152.4 (mm)!