Digital Protractor

I'm thinking about building a digital protractor (i.e. inclinometer) for my college project and wondered if it would be possible to achieve this without the use of a gyroscope or an accelerometer, therefore using only a tilt switch?

Unless you will construct an accelerometer, you will need to buy one. I don't know how a gyroscope comes into the picture. Will your protractor spin? What do you use it for?
If you are willing to put on a force gauge, you can detect angle with that but I don't see why you won't use accelerometer.

A tilt switch is essentially a digital device, so 'protractor' is not really applicable, unless you've got some controllable tilt table, and you do a binary chop to find the angle of the underlying surface.

Ok, thanks. The accelerometer wasn't on the list of sensors that they had available at the university, therefore we would have to purchase one.

What accelerometer's are generally used with the arduino boards? and do you have to purchase any additional components to be able to connect them?

How would the force gauge work?

Work out how much of a calibrated load you can measure and do the trig.

evans123:
Ok, thanks. The accelerometer wasn't on the list of sensors that they had available at the university, therefore we would have to purchase one.

What accelerometer's are generally used with the arduino boards? and do you have to purchase any additional components to be able to connect them?

How would the force gauge work?

Try this:

There is nothing else you need. It needs to be powered by the Arduino 3.3V voltage pin. It used to be $30 I think.

liudr:

evans123:
Ok, thanks. The accelerometer wasn't on the list of sensors that they had available at the university, therefore we would have to purchase one.

What accelerometer's are generally used with the arduino boards? and do you have to purchase any additional components to be able to connect them?

How would the force gauge work?

Try this:

Triple Axis Accelerometer Breakout - MMA7361 - SEN-09652 - SparkFun Electronics

There is nothing else you need. It needs to be powered by the Arduino 3.3V voltage pin. It used to be $30 I think.

Wheres the best place to get one of this from, if you live in the UK?

I don't know about best, but I've used Proto-Pic a few times.

dxw00d:
I don't know about best, but I've used Proto-Pic a few times.

Triple Axis Accelerometer Breakout - ADXL362 - Proto-PIC

Thanks. Will that breakout board work with the arduino nano?

evans123:

dxw00d:
I don't know about best, but I've used Proto-Pic a few times.

Triple Axis Accelerometer Breakout - ADXL362 - Proto-PIC

Thanks. Will that breakout board work with the arduino nano?

It should, the Nano has a 3.3 VDC power pin and eight analog input pins (you need one analog input per axis for that accelerometer IC).