Accelerations during "drop-test" of equipment

Other Hardware Science and Measurement
1

Hello all,

I am working on a project for a customer where we will conduct numerous "drop-test" on the product.
I wish to measure accelerations on 2 or 3 different positions on the product and record these visually and store the values in a .csv or comma separated file format.

Expected accelerations +/-16g
Each drop test including relaxation period is between 1 and 1,5second.
I wish to record and store at a frequency of 1000Hz so as to get good resolution for post-processing of the signals/values.

I know there are multiple plug&play usb solutions for use with a PC, but these solutions are very expensive and I was thinking perhaps arduino could solve this for me. However I am fairly new to arduino and don't know about the possibilities/performance and limitations of this system.

Must have: synchronized time-stamp between the sensors, live graphing of the accelerations perhaps on a pc connected to the arduino?

Would be nice: , easy way to number or split the recordings with a simple stop/start button or similar.

Do you have any suggestions to how I can solve this?
The drop-testing will require many iterations/runs/trials and with small adjustments needed between each to adjust the impact. This requires a fast way to evaluate visually the accelerations.

2

Any Arduino can sample a consumer grade accelerometer at 1000Hz, and there are a number of inexpensive accelerometers that allow that sample rate.

You can store the data to an SD card, or send it to a PC at that rate, but doing both simultaneously with a low end Arduino may be pushing it too far.

A high end Arduino like the Teensy 3.2 could store the data from a single fall in memory, then you could do anything with it.

3

A 16g stop will mean that the time to stop may be very short - you need to decide if a sample rate of 1khz ( giving a basic response time of 2mS ) is fast enough.

4

Synchronizing the readings may be an issue with standard accelerometers if you talk to them one at a time.

5

Assuming a drop of about 1m leading to an impact deceleration of less than 16g, that's implying more
that 60mm of travel during deceleration, which seems unlikely to me unless the object was a beach-ball
or the ground was made of kittens! - have you done your sums right?