Accelerometer « Jee Labs Talk

Jee Labs Talk » Success stories

Accelerometer

(3 posts) (3 voices)

Tags:

No tags yet.

pedro

I'm building an accelerometer data logger to take with me in my rowing boat, so I can register the acceleration of the boat.

I'm using a JeeNode v3 and a DC-SS009 board from Sure Electronics that contains a A7260 accelerometer chip from Freescale Semiconductor.

I finally managed to read the x axis data and send this data by RF to my other JeeLink connected to the PC. I had some trouble with RF12 configuration but JC helped me out.
Another problem that took me one hour to solve: the order of reading the ADCL and ADCH registers! I was using them directly as parameters to a function but in fact we have to guaranty that we read first the ADCL and last the ADCH register so that the ADC register is unblocked for the next reading.

So I'm finally setup for this new project, the basic hardware is working.
I'll be posting here the next steps...

Posted 19/11/2009 01:11:49
rowfast

Hi Pedro,
I'm a rowing coach and would like to do some research on the accelerations of rowing boats. At the rowing club we have set up a little team to develop a tool similar to the unit you describe. Additionally we plan to also include a GPS for total distance travelled and a hart rate sensor like this one, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/productinfo.php?productsid=8661. Ideally we would be able to have about 6 units (one on each boat) running simultaneously communicating with a single laptop, onboard our coach motor boat.
We are verry much interested in your results and possibly you have some advice for us.
Many thanks,
Rik

Posted 24/07/2010 07:54:15
lordmundi

we are trying to do something very similar to you Rowfast... we are trying to record GPS, accelerometer, and heart rate, and are using the same exact board you point to. We are doing this to measure a sky dive, but practically the same device. We also want to measure temperature and pressure.
We eventually decided to have an Android phone do most of this as this is much cheaper and easier to do. Android phones are becoming more and more popular and there are free apps to record accelerations and record GPS. So, we plan to use the phone for these! There are lots of advantages to this, especially cost of development being basically 0.
That leaves us with heartrate, pressure, and temperature. Ideally, we would communicate these all to a central program on the Android phone and it would do everything. A bluetooth adapter would likely provide this, but we didn't want the extra expense of a bluetooth adapter.
But, anyways, to make a long story longer, we are building something very similar, but we are having problems talking to the Polar HRMI (Heart Rate Monitor Interface) circuit from Dan Julio/Sparkfun. If you are anyone else can demonstrate how to get the code that will talk over I2C to the JeeNode, we'd love to see it!
FG

Posted 24/07/2010 21:40:44