Accelerometer

Sensing in-air motion

Accelerometers are used in a variety of everyday devices because they sense orientation and changes in movement as they move through space. In this tutorial we’ll look at how to use these sensors with Bela.

Table of contents

1. Measuring acceleration
2. Hardware setup
3. The code
4. Practice tasks

Measuring acceleration

Accelerometers measure the acceleration of an object - in other words, they measure the rate of change of an object’s velocity. They can be used to sense static forces of acceleration (such as the earth’s gravity), or dynamic forces of acceleration (such as vibrations and movement).

Typical accelerometers have 3 axes of sensing, oriented on the x, y and z planes. Accelerometers have many uses in modern technological devices, from the orientation sensor in smart phones which knows which way to display the screen, to the navigation systems in airplanes.

Hardware setup

The accelerometer we’ll use is an analog device that provides a voltage we can read for each axis. To connect to Bela we need 5 wires: Power (3.3V), Ground, and one each for the X, Y and Z axes.

The code

Find the accelerometer sketch in the Pure Data section of the Examples tab of the Bela IDE.

1. Reading from the axes

The signals from the accelerometer are read through the analog inputs 0, 1 and 2 on Bela, so they’re received in the sketch by using the [adc~ 3 4 5] object.

2. Calculating swing velocity

This example uses the swing velocity of the sensor to control the amplitude of a sinetone. Run the project and try swinging the accelerometer around, and listen to the effect. Open up the [accelerometer-integration] abstraction to see how we integrate the accelerometer data to estimate overall velocity.

Practice tasks

Task 1: View accelerometer signals on the scope

Hint

Task 2: Identify the different axes of the sensors

Hint

Task 3: Create a 3-state system depending on orientation

Hint

Task 4: Mix between 3 audio samples depending on orientation

Hint

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