[Weekend Hack] Arduino + ADXL3xx Accelerometer

Do you remember I once told you I have an arduino uno board? I don't have enough accessories; a LED, a push button, 10 jumper wires, a  breadboard and an ADXL3xx accelerometer chip. Last weekend, I tried out the LED and the push button. 

With #arduino uno board, a LED, a pushbutton, a resistor and a breadboard(the only kits I have), I tried out this twitter.com/kobebigs/statu…
— Kobe Subramaniam (@kobebigs) May 11, 2013

This weekend, I set out to explore how best I can use my accelerometer chip. Though I could not understand most of the resources found, I resorted to this tutorial on the arduino site.  I wired up the chip and LED nicely to the breadboard and powered it with  5V. All I knew was, I will be receiving values from 0 to 1023 (0 at 0V and 1023 at 5V). I set my LED up to blink when the value of the x-axis exceeds 512.

board setup

I turned the board around, placed my phone underneath and introduced vibration to it. Luckily for me, it worked, seeing different values pop up. See my codes below:

	// these constants describe the pins. They won't change:
	const int xpin = A3; // x-axis of the accelerometer
	const int ypin = A2; // y-axis
	const int zpin = A1; // z-axis (only on 3-axis models)
	const int x_max = 512;
	int ledPin = 8; //pin for led
	//setup
	void setup(){
	pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // set LED on output mode
	Serial.begin(9600); //start serial communication
	}
	//loop
	void loop(){
	//read values from x, y, z pins
	int xVal = analogRead(xpin);
	int yVal = analogRead(ypin);
	int zVal = analogRead(zpin);
	//compare values to x_max and trigger LED Blink
	if(xVal > x_max){
	digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
	delay(100);
	digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
	delay(100);
	} else{
	digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
	}
	//print sensor values
	Serial.print(xVal);
	Serial.print("\t");
	Serial.print(yVal);
	Serial.print("\t");
	Serial.print(zVal);
	Serial.println();
	delay(1000); //wait a second
	}

view raw accelerometer_test.ino hosted with ❤ by GitHub

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