Make: Sensors

Chapter 8. Acceleration

When you tilt your smartphone, the screen probably turns from portrait to landscape. How did the phone know? Smartphones have a built-in accelerometer, and gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration downward, so the downward pull of gravity helps tell the phone which way it’s oriented.

Some games are controlled by tilting a phone in the air, using the accelerometer. The popular Wii game console uses an accelerometer for its controllers. In this chapter, you will hack a Wii controller to use its sensors. We used a phone accelerometer for control in the Football Robot from Make: Arduino Bots and Gadgets.

Hard disks found in laptops and desktops can now take a lot of punishment. Many are rated to take a shock of 150 g (when ...