I want a crude device to capture the roughness of a road, while driving on it. Yes, the device would be in the vehicle, and not on the road. I will have a computer in the vehicle, and will be recording the distance with time already using a DMI attached to the wheel of the vehicle. If I remember, the accelerometer produces voltage, and so, I would need to calibrate it. I have seen an app on my phone that registers movement of my phone, and that is along the lines of what I need. I can live with low accuracy. However, I need to know how to go about installing the device, how to power it, how to connect it, and what software to use or write that will capture the signal, and then what to do to calibrate it so that I can calibrate the captured data. Any help on what accelerometer to purchase and how to go about making this happen would be very much appreciated - or must I simply use the service on my phone. I want this accelerometer as part of a kit that I sell, so would prefer the development route.
Hi,
Well, if you are going the completely custom route there are two main ways to go about it:
- Start from base components and build everything from scratch.
- Use a commercially available USB-based accelerometer board that has libraries/examples/software available and connect that to your laptop.
If going route #1, you’ll need:
]Some way to power your electronics. This could be from a step down regulator connected to the ~12 V DC of the car or a USB port from your computer. For example, if you are using 5 V DC electronics (ex: Arduino-based), you could use a 5 V DC step-down regulator found here./:m]
]An accelerometer! You can find those here. For the best results, make sure its range (sometimes fixed, sometimes configurable; check datasheets!) fits the data you wish to collect for maximum accuracy and precision./:m]
]Some kind of interface between the accelerometer and computer. In most cases, this would be a small microcontroller or microcontroller board (ex: Arduino)./:m]
]All that’s left is to write some code for your microcontroller to read data from the accelerometer, process it (if needed/desired) and send it off to your computer to be integrated with your other sensor data. If using something like Arduino, you could send your data off using a VCP (Virtual COM Port) over the USB port. Most microcontroller boards support this by default./:m]
If instead you prefer route #2, you should probably have a look at stuff from Phidgets, such as RB-Phi-232 (stand alone) or RB-Phi-379 (requires a hub, too: RB-Phi-309). They both can be powered only by USB, which makes it simple for you. They also have extensive libraries for most modern programming environments and plenty of examples.
We hope this helps.
Sincerely,