One of the best ways to describe how a reed switch works is to use a door sensor example. We all know about home security systems and that they detect when doors are opened or closed but not many people know how they go about doing that. One perception that I have when thinking about security systems is that they are expensive, but what I have learned while working as an engineer in a reed switch company is that there are many inexpensive ways that you can create or add onto a security system.
I’m sure that we have all had those days when we wake up in the morning and go out to the garage and you realize that you left the door open all night. It’s such a simple task that sometimes we forget all about it. A reed switch and a little ingenuity could keep this from happening in the future. All you need is a power source, proximity sensor, actuator, resistors, and a LED light. By setting up the LED light somewhere that you will see before going to bed the system will tell you if the garage door is up or down.
The best deterrent against home-burglary is bright lights. Most of the time you can stop crime by alerting an intruder that you are aware of them. That brings me to a sensor that can be attached to your back gate at home. By wiring a sensor into the light system in your backyard you can set it up to where when you open the back gate all the flood lights turn on. Would you want to continue moving forward knowing that the action of opening a gate turned on a flood of lights?
The last system that I want to talk about today is a sensor that our CTO/CEO David Posey has previously researched. Using magnets and a reed switch he balanced the magnetic field so that any intruding steel would activate the switch, making a steel sensor. The sensor would let you know if the deadbolt of your house door was fully latched or not. Even if the deadbolt didn’t contain any iron it, slight modifications could make the system work.
By simply ensuring that your house is secure and all doors are locked fully every night, you may be able to save yourself and your house from being harmed. At HSI we like to imagine a sensing problem with everything around us. We generate a lot of ideas from imagining things around the house or the office that we can improve or add to with a sensing solution. Check back next week for Zeke’s sensing solution for tools.
