Hi! I am a total beginner with robotics but I would like to start learning how to use this technology for a specific project.
Let me describe what I want to do and what I would like to achieve:
I am an artist located in Austria/Vienna. At the time I am working on a project where movements of a dancer are transformed into sound, partly by the use of the microsoft kinect station: pulse-project.net
But this is just the beginning. I would like to use other sensors in combination with the kinect to get more precise and distinct information about the motion of the dancer.
Sensors I would like to use:
* 1 IMU ±3g Triple Axis Accelerometer, ±400° / s Gyroscope, Triple Axis Magnetometer to measure tilt and rotation (orientation) (robotshop.com/imu-triple-axis-accelerometer-gyroscope-magneto…)
The dancer should be equiped with the sensor connected to a board (arduino / jeeNode) that communicates the sensor information to a computer nearby via WIFI.
My Questions
* Can this sensor be connected to an arduino or jeeNode board?
* What would be best practice to use this sensor as described above?
* Does anybody has experience with these things and would like to help? I have even a small budget for this work
Any help appreciated
Thanks, Thomas
Hi!
Thanks for this kind reply!
What is this exactly and how does it help? Do you have a link to the product I could use?
If I use one of your boards (please tell me wich would be interesting), is the use of an analog or I2C sensor still interesting?
Sorry, but I am really a beginner.
Thanks,
Thomas
PS: the kinect is not the problem, it works fine an we receive all information needed.
The sensor you selected uses Tx and Rx (serial communication). An analog sensor uses an A/D pin, while an I2C sensor uses four pins, none of which are the serial line. You need the serial line for fast WiFi communication.
DiamondBack Arduino Compatible WiFi Microcontroller
RedBack Arduino Compatible WiFi Microcontroller
If you don’t need an all in one, we have several WiFi shields.
When selecting an IMU, you need to have an idea of the maximum acceleration it will experience, as well as the maximum angular velocity. An IMU simply combines both an accelerometer and gyro onto one board; if you find individual chips which would be better, use them.
Something like the IMU ±1.7g Dual Axis Accelerometer, Triple Axis 50° / s Gyroscope Combo might be a good choice since it does not appear you will be doing any very fast movements or rotations, and the output is analog.
Hope this helps,
Hi thomaaas,
Welcome to the RobotShop Forum. Very interesting project and we hope to see the things you are able to accomplish in the near future with this technology. The sensor you selected, RB-Pol-147, uses serial communication, so you would either need to use soft serial or digital pins 0 and 1 to communicate with another device. Most WiFi devices which connect to the Arduino use pins 0 and 1. You may instead want to use an analog or I2C sensor to make coding and connections easier. If you have experience with the Kinect, you may simply want to purchase a second one and place it at an angle and compare the data to increase accuracy. We ofer WiFi equipped Arduino boards which may help.
We have only played with the Kinect so far as to get the 3D image, though perhaps others here may have more experience. Integrating additional sensors is certainly interesting, though without doing a search are unaware of anyone else who has done it and made their findings openly available.
Sincerely,
Thank you again, this helps a lot. I understand much better what yout point is.
This one (robotshop.com/imu-triple-axis-accelerometer-gyroscope-magnetometer-3g.html) would just be so great because it says:
An on-board Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) handles the tricky data fusion problem, reporting yaw, pitch, and roll angles at up to 300 Hz over a simple TTL serial interface.
This would make life much more easier, because we don’t need to write the code for data fusion and just get 3 value: yaw, pitch and roll
I’ll go on resaerching… 
