Increasing Sensitivity
Increasing the sensitivity of the capacitance sensor from the penny was essential to the proper function of the accelerometer. We decided to move to creating a pure copper plate out of the thin copper strips provided to us by Matt. We constructed the small plate using thermal tape to separate the two sides, and soldered a wire to one side. Once connected to our circuit, the sensor was able to sense our hand up to 10 cm away with ~800 units of precision. Touching this sensor, unlike the penny, caused the program to overload, which corresponds to a "-2" reading. A feature of these new plates was also that they held charge for a lot longer than the penny plate capacitor, which was proven by each time we touched the plate, the "zero" reading of the sensor would be at a higher value than before.