Is my idea even possible?

Hello, firstly I am a complete novice with an idea that may or may not be possible, hence I signed up to the forum for help. I would like build a circuit which will light up a green light if, at the moment pressure is released from a pressure sensor, the height of two points A and B are level. The best way I can explain it is imagine you are holding a ball in each hand and at the same time you have your foot on a pressure sensor. When you release your foot from the sensor a green light will illuminate if the balls in each hand are level with each other. It will illuminate red if the balls are not level. Lastly the sensors etc need to be micro if possible. I’ve looked around but I honestly don’t know where I should start.

For sure you can do this -



Simple micro and a small amount of code should suffice.


Regards, Dana.

The more detail you give us the more likely you will get a satisfactory solution.
It would help if you told us what the two objects are, or at least their size and separation. Are they in air or liquid? Any constraints on their movement?
Do you already have a particular pressure sensor in mind?
Would you be able to solder components to build a circuit?

Engineering is a world of numbers, numbers, numbers. But learning is still a matter of just soaking up a lot of input, at first anything new, later more focussed searching.
Try visiting a few sites:
Vendors of springs
Digikey
The spring vendor's site is immediately a sea of numbers. Don't be overwhelmed, just research a few of them.
Go to Digikey and look up some resistors, transistors, and ICs. Play with the selector spinboxes. Download some datasheets. You are again awash in numbers. Spot-research some of the parameters listed, both by online reading and by playing with Digikey spinboxes to see what components come up. Don't try to imagine which parameters are 'most important'.
Go back to your idea and explanation of it. Try to come up with a more specific design by assigning some trial numbers to every element you describe - lengths, forces, speeds, accuracies, etc. It will take some time. There's no right or wrong way to go at this point, and you don't have to get everything right. Just dive in, make mistakes, and anything you learn will be progress.
The exercise will help you see answers to some of your questions, and give you a much better idea of where to look for the rest. Also, it will help you see why those datasheets are so full of numbers, and give you a better idea of what you're in for in the future. No one book can 'guide' you from start to finish on pretty much any idea you come up with. Just dive in and swim for a while.
Then, when you start looking for useful articles, you'll have a better feel for what to look for, what may be suitable to your needs, and how much plowing it takes, so you don't get discouraged at the 20% mark. Start as simply as possible, and see what it takes to get it right. The next project will go faster and easier in some respects, but also throw new challenges at you. Any that don't will most likely be boring!