🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 19699@constellation.ecn.uoknor.edu, rwmurphr@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Robert W Murphree) writes:
>williamb@ee.ubc.ca (william burchill) writes:
>
>>Could somebody post some information or suggest a book on sensors 
>>for detecting balance, i.e. orientation relative to the horizontal plane?
>>I'm praticularly interested in knowing what different types are available. 
>>Are there any without moving parts?
>I have at home somewhere some product literature on an electronic
>level which sells for 100- several 100 dollars.  NO moving parts.
>don't know about interfacing it.
>I'll try to dig it up next week.


I met the inventor of this device a little while ago.
It sells for $80 in a decent number of hardware stores; you might
want to go out to your nearest ACE or whatever and take a look.
I don't remember the name of his company; this was their only product,
although they sold it to Bosch for marketing in Europe/Asia.

The device uses an accelerometer in solid state of some sort.
They've got a patent on it, and aren't too keen on talking, it seems.
(although I might have got that impression because the fellow was just
more interested in drinking his beer than talking shop :-)

Anyhow, it is based on a small (1"x2") removable unit that has
an LCD display and a couple of buttons.  Even if nothing else, you
could decode the lines they use to output to the LCD display.
This thing is quite accurate, as well as precise to at least 1 degree inclination.
Two of them would give you planar information, of course.

Joe Bob says: check it out...

-Bob Ellefson