I have a project idea which would require a 6 DOF IMU sensor connected to an arduino, which would then transmit the captured data wirelessly to a PC. The transmission could be a separate event from the data capture so no need for real time data transmission although it would be a bonus. There's probably bazillion different devices I could choose from but since I have no prior experience on IMUs or wireless communication shields/add-ons, I could use some advice. Basically the event I'm trying to capture lasts only about a second or two max. During this time I'd like to capture as much motion data as possible while keeping the entire device small, portable and battery operated.
What is the general accuracy of the modern accelerometer/gyro combinations? What kind of sample rate I could operate them with and still get meaniful data? What would be the smallest arduino capable of capturing this data?
The current crop of 6-9 DOF motion sensors all seem to have very similar accuracy and capabilities. For an up to date overview, the chrobotics site has an excellent introduction into how they work and also goes into great detail about their limitations: http://www.chrobotics.com/library You will find a lot of discussion of various sensors on the diydrones forum as well. I'm quite happy with the performance of the LSM303Dxx series of 6 DOF sensors.
The smallest and lowest power solution to a remote 6-9 DOF wireless sensor would be to use a radio module with a microprocessor programmed in C. I'm using the Pololu Wixel for that purpose Pololu - Wixel Programmable USB Wireless Module The Pololu engineers offer a "wireless tilt mouse" accelerometer app which is quite simple and could be used as a starting point. There are a few other inexpensive radio modules with similar capabilities, but I'm not aware of any that are as well documented as the Wixel.
I'm going to give the Blend Micro a go and see if it's enough for this project. I also found an ITG3205+ADXL345+HMC5883L based 9DOF breakout board for under £6. Since the Blend Micro doesn't have much RAM on it I'm going to try to stream the measurement data live through the bluetooth link to a computer. I have no idea what I've put my hands into but let's see
