In belated accordance with our recent homework assignment, I connected my forward lumbar stretch switch to the Feather microcontroller and used a standard blinking function to direct the LED. The suspended quarter could be lowered down and onto two exposed wires that then created a connection between the microcontroller’s output and the LED.
It mostly worked! I repeatedly ran into a problem though: the LED was always quite dim when it blinked on. All the wires were extremely flush the first time I arranged the breadboard, so my first theory was that I hadn’t cut long enough wires and that the exposed ends hadn’t then been pushed all the way in. So I recut the wires, arranged them all, and nothing changed.
I then went into Arduino and realized I was directing the microcontroller toward the wrong pin, so I changed the LED integer to 16 rather than 2. That got the LED blinking at a brighter intensity, but it still wasn’t bright bright, and I’m not sure why. Nevertheless, the quarter switch worked, and I feel younger and more flexible than ever before.
Regarding potential improvements, it’s a little grotesquely DIY, particularly the exposed wires that are effectively taped to the side of the orange. I’d also like to figure out what happened with the dim LED light.