Data acquisition/accelerometers

[Zivnuska]

Does anyone know of a good comparative analysis of the new data acquisition/accelerometers on the market? I am going to Bragg-Smith (performance driving school in corvettes) in 5 weeks and I wonder if any of the new devices would be helpful and affordable. Phil Zivnuska

[jsquared94]

I am not familiar with any of the commercial accelerometers out there, such as the g-force. However, I'm an electronics dork, so I plan to build one, as I have a couple of actual accelerometer chips sitting in my parts box. If you remember from calculus, integrating acceleration once gives you velocity, a second time gives you position. Of course you also can measure elapsed time based on either an internal clocking mechanism or from when acceleration begins and when the car is ultimately at rest. From those calculations you can determine plenty of other neat things as well! I imagine that any commercial accelerometer out there is gonna be decent; it probably just comes down to features.

Enjoy the driving school!
Jared :flag