idea for Neo 2nd generation: Accelerometer

[Ben Burdette]

Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 January 2007 12:33, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote:
>   
>> On 1/24/07 11:41 AM, "kkr" <kkr22.mpt56 at bluewin.ch> wrote:
>>     
>>> Does anybody know more about price and precision of the accelerometers's
>>> chips on the market now?
>>>       
>> About US$3.
>>     
>
> Are they good enough to twice integrate the acceleration data (which obviously 
> puts quite some demand onto accuracy) to get a better estimate of where a car 
> would be after entering a tunnel? If so, there's your killer app.
>   
I have a device that uses an accelerometer to measure 0-60 times, and 
quarter mile times in the car.  You find a deserted piece of road, stick 
the thing to the windshield and get it level, then go.  It senses when 
you have reached the quarter mile, or you've reached 60 mph and notes 
the time.  Much cheaper than a drag strip, good for people who hot rod 
their cars and want to measure the difference in performance.  With the 
openmoko phone you could add a data logging feature to gather G force 
data throughout a drag strip or autocross run, in addition to 
calculating the time. 

Another use would be as a game controller, either with a game in the 
phone, or transmitting the motion data over bluetooth to use with a PC 
game.  It would be ideal to have a 3 axis accelerometer and a 3 axis 
tilt sensor like the wii.  Apparently the wii controller uses an IR 
sensor to keep itself oriented relative to the game console; since the 
phone doesn't have IR this wouldn't be possible.  But then again it 
doesn't have accelerometers either at this point.