I’m fabricating brass framed mirrors with LED strip lighting. I’d like to have a built-in capacitive touch sensor for dimming, switching the strip. It has to be completely concealed, touching sensor is on the brass frame.
Size is about 2000x1000mm with a 75x9mm brass flat bar around. The brass itself is roughly 38kg and it will be lacquered with a few microns of 1k acrylic, which I have no idea of its resistance…
Do you see any chance to make it feasible, if yes, please suggest a product as well or rather go with a motion sensor?
Yes, that sounds feasible, though you may find you need to connect your capacitive sensor to a smaller isolated piece of the brass, which you could do by integrating this as a design element in your frame depending on how ornate your frame design is (eg. some knobs on each corner, but only one corner is hooked up as a sensor). Probably your best option is to just see how you go by testing with large pieces of raw material first.
You might like to use a capacitive touch sensor like our PiicoDev module:
Or if you need something more complex in a single package, the Bare Conductive boards are very good:
Thank you so much for your instant reply.
I’m as stupid as one can be for electronics… Would you be able, for an extra fee, to prepare both panels with wires, I just have to connect them? (and mark them where to connect… yes, that’s me…)
That’s not a service we can offer at the moment, but we can definitely help you out here on the forum if you’re happy to learn Check out what @teena175334 managed to accomplish this way:
I’d say getting this done is definitely within your abilities, it’s only the knowledge of how that’s missing at the moment.
That LED strip looks like a pretty standard arrangement for 12V strips, here’s a typical shematic:
Physically, they’re laid out something more like this:
I’d recommend first getting your setup working just with On/Off, (it’s essentially the same as using controlling a solenoid), here’s a tutorial:
And then add PWM dimming. Here’s a great video on LED birghtness control.
Thank you so much Oliver, really appreciate it.
Is there any chance that you could suggest someone from here on forum or anywhere else who’d be able to help me out with this, for definitely extra money.
I have a 1.5 years old daughter and I work 12 hours every day, Saturday, Sunday. I literally don’t have time to learn this.
Idk, maybe not within the company as a service but just private…
I’d suggest getting in touch with a local maker space (there’s usually a club/group in most towns and cities these days). They’d probably be best suited to point you in the direction of someone local who may be able to assist.
A quick google for " Maker Space" will usually bring them up
thank you mate, I have tried that but couldn’t find anything but artistic maker space, I think we don’t have it in Botany area… or actually nor in Sydney…
There is one in Marrickville it’d still be worth giving them a call. They might know someone in your area who’s better to contact if you can’t get there. There’s also OzConversions in Botany - they appear to be focused on Caravan work, but they might be worth a call. As well as quite a few others:
Outside of these hobbyists, the only ones I can really think of would be an electronics engineering consultancy, but this is more suitable for commercial applications. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re after.
Check out what 
