I'm new here and have no previous experience with arduino so please be patient with me. I'm sorry if this has been done before, or explained, but I tried to search and found lots of information. I'm hoping to get some straight answers.
Basically, what I'd like to do is use a 3axis accelerometer to control electric actuators. I'm wondering if arduino would be a good platform to do this inexpensively, simply, and reliably?
My basic questions are, can arduino do this? Can arduino provide two outputs simultaneously? Is there a compatible accelerometer that is fairly sensitive to being tilted? and lastly, I've heard that if I want to control fairly powerful actuators, arduino may not be my best choice, or is there a way around this?
Well, you've written a lot, but told us very little.
"actuator" is a what?
Electric powered hydraulic ram?
R/C servo?
Piezo micro-actuator?
Galvanometer?
Sensitive to tilt?
Of course an accelerometer is, but how senstitive does it need to be?
How responsive?
Basically I want to monitor the pitch/roll/ and accelerations of a vehicle and adjust a spoiler accordingly with a linear actuator. Since the spoiler will provide a large amount of downforce, the actuating device will be quite powerful.
I'm a total newb when it comes to this sort of thing, I apologize if I'm not using precise terminology.
Ideally, I would like this package to be very responsive (reaction time) because of the dynamic environment a track car is naturally in. Also, I said sensitive because I feel like the car won't pitch and roll dramatically (although accel /decel / lateral G's will be more intense)
I hope this is more clear. Like I said, I'm a 100% beginner and I'm hoping you guys might be able to point me in the right direction with some hardware that could help me achieve this.
I'm not the first person to think of doing this. The patent for "active aero" has been around for a while, and this has been done in F1 years ago before it got banned. However, from my searches, I've found little documentation on actually building something like this. People have done it, but haven't really shared their methods. I like the idea of using accelerometers rather than existing engine sensors to determine what is happening with the car. I also like the idea of the small packaging of arduino rather than hooking things up to a pc which doesn't really belong in a track car (think weight savings).
When I say vehicle, I mean a full sized vehicle. Also, when I say adjust a spoiler, it will have several elements to it so that it is optimal for various situations (straight line G's vs. lateral G's) Also, there will be a front aero element as well. I'm hoping to control up to 4 actuators simultaneously. I'm hoping to achieve quite a bit of downforce, over one hundred pounds. I will design the mechanism so that the actuator has a mechanical advantage. But that gives you an idea of the size of actuator required. The stroke would only be a couple of inches to change the spoiler angle a range of maybe 15 degrees or so. I would also like to do this as quickly as possible (realistically moving around 2inch per second) , and fairly accurately. I need it to be more than just "on/off" it would have to be able to stop between zero and full stroke. Extreme accuracy is not neccessary.
EDIT: (Maybe a torquey servo would be better?)
I plan on doing a bit of experimenting with the accelerometer as a "sensor." I was just wondering if you guys might have suggestions on which hardware to use. Obviously you guys have extensive experience with Arduino and related components... where as I have none.
I will also take a look at that link, thank you Richard.
If somebody doesn't mind pointing out what type of Arduino would suit my needs, or even an accelerometer that would be fairly straight forward to hook up and provide reasonable results for a full size vehicle, it would be a huge help. I've been looking around, but as I've said, I have no experience in this field. I'm sort of jumping right into it head first!
