Adding Touchy-Feelly to a Glock

Seems like alot of our projects lately are gun-oriented.  I guess we do alot more shooting in the winter... but fishing and gardening are picking up, so we'll have more variety soon.  In the meantime, with all the camera/laser/smartphone projects we thought it would be cool to add a combined power supply, and get rid of so many buttons.  Why not add "touch sense" to the gun and have all the fun stuff turn on automatically?

So, here we go!

The foil strip acts as a capacitive sensor, and the microcontroller measures the change in voltage when a big, hairy human approaches.

 With the foil along side of the magazine in the handle, the microcontroller can easily detect when the handgun is picked up.  Right now it just lights an LED, but soon, it will turn on a laser and start the video camera.  A very small wire is all that is needed for the sensor - not a big piece of foil.  Plus, the Glock has a nice 'compartment' in the handle big enough for a microcontroller, battery, etc.

This project came out of another project... We have been experimenting with different objects to detect when a person (or a cow) is near.  One way is using an electric fence - its already strung around the pasture, so we measured the sensor changes as a person or the cow approached.

It was fun to see just how sensitive we could make the device.  It would be cool to detect if a dog or coyote came into the pasture and play a recording to shoo it off.  Or, to keep the fence off unless the cow approached, then turn it on.

Always something to try or experiment with.