I need some help prototyping a product for my university course:
I am using an Arduino UNO with a single axis accelerometer (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9332) and I want to measure the G-force of an impact. I will be fixing the accelerometer on to a headband to measure the impact to the head when heading a football.
A single axis accelerometer measures acceleration in one direction only, which makes it nearly impossible to make sense of data from the experiment you’ve outlined.
It is fine if you are planning to work with a dummy, but you should be aware that there are extremely stringent regulations covering ALL experimentation with human subjects in the U.S. (and probably also in most parts of the world). There may also be liability for injuries sustained by subjects. Consult a research professor in the biology or human physiology departments for advice.
I suggest you start with a Google search. There are literally thousands of tutorials for Arduino. Start with the accelerometer and get it working, then get the LCD to work by itself, then you should have learned enough to combine them.
jremington:
A single axis accelerometer measures acceleration in one direction only, which makes it nearly impossible to make sense of data from the experiment you’ve outlined.
It is fine if you are planning to work with a dummy, but you should be aware that there are extremely stringent regulations covering ALL experimentation with human subjects in the U.S. (and probably also in most parts of the world). There may also be liability for injuries sustained by subjects. Consult a research professor in the biology or human physiology departments for advice.
I will be using a dummy yes.
Also a number of different accelerometers in different directions which will allow me to take readings from multiple directions?
codlink:
I suggest you start with a Google search. There are literally thousands of tutorials for Arduino. Start with the accelerometer and get it working, then get the LCD to work by itself, then you should have learned enough to combine them.
Thank you. I have found a number of different tutorials (e.g one using Arduino to measure impact of a punch on a punchbag, which is proving quite helpful.)
I’ve used the accelerometers with the Arduino “AnalogReadSerial” example code, which is giving a reading on the serial monitor of around 505, dropping to 450 and jumping to 550 when the accelerometer is impacted. I am assuming this is the voltage - with 0 = 0v, 505=2.5v and 1023=5v - assuming the accelerometer is receiving 5v of power.
How would I convert these readings to a g-force reading?
And also how to I code it to print only higher impacts? I want it to only print to the monitor if the impact is the highest in that ‘session’ of impacts.
Hope this all makes sense, and thanks for your help so far!
I second waltr’s suggestion to read the accelerometer data sheet. It is not easy going, but on the other hand, you must understand how the accelerometer works and how the ADC works if you are going to make sense out of the data you collect!
Find all the tutorials you can and go through them. Be aware though that, unfortunately, some of what people post on the web is nonsense. If you run into trouble, folks on this forum are generally happy help with the details, but they probably won’t write another tutorial.