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Random thought... before there was sw eating the world there was (analog) electricity eating the world. So many 20th c sensors basically produce a voltage signal. You don’t need an arduino etc to read them. An analog multimeter or oscilloscope will do. Any writing on this?
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It’s not at all convenient... for eg replacing physical scales or a spring balance (pointer on a dial or linear rule) with a strain gauge means you need a power source and a voltmeter. But once electricity eats a sensor layer, you can build instrument panels without computing.
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Makes an adjacent point I think, and at a much more abstract/economics-social level of resolution than I'm talking about. I'm talking things like op-amps...
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One of the hard parts about purely analog sensors is that you need calibration. And for that you need external processes and tooling to ensure that the sensors provide useful information. Related: the history of analog electronic music may be an interesting adjacent topic.
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I've been doing some research in that direction, but right now it's more around electric lights/switches than sensors like you're talking about. If I was going to research sensors I'd probably start by looking at discussions of post-WWII technological transfers.
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The robot building books of my youth talk a lot about photoresistors and phototransistors while these days cameras are cheap enough to use everywhere, even for things as simple as “is it bright or dark”
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