Motion capture system based on MPU 6050

Using Arduino Project Guidance
#1

Hi, I am trying to build a sort of motion capture system based on Gyro and Accelerometer values of MPU 6050 ( but mainly gyro).

It goes something like this: We strap a bunch of MPU 6050s on different locations on a person’s jacket and trousers. We we use some wireless module (wifi or bluetooth) to transmit the data to a PC, where we further process it and try to build a 3D reconstruction of user’s movement.

I am thinking of two different ways to go about it:

  1. Connect each MPU 6050 to a NodeMCU and a battery, and use it to independently transmit the data to the pc. This would mean that I don’t have to do any sort of wiring on the jacket to connect any modules. But it also means I would have to strap 8-10 wifi transmitters onto a person, which may increase the power consumption and possibly also cause health concerns.

  2. Connect all MPU 6050s to GPIO pins of Raspberry Pi, and use Raspberry Pi to aggregate and transmit the data in one go, rather than having each MPU 6050 transmit data independantly.

This simplifies the networking side of things as there is only one wifi transmitter involved, but this will end up involving a lot more wires on the jacket. Also since raspberry pi requires a lot more power than Arduino and probably NodeMCU as well, im not sure this will end up saving me any power.

My current skill set is computer graphics and video game development, with very little to no hardware exposure. So im looking for guidance and tips from you guys

#2

Forget the hardware and software for now and concentrate on the the volume of data needed to be transmitted and the time frame for collecting that data. Once that is done, you will know how many bytes per second must be transmitted and from that you can design the communications that will support it.

Paul

#3

Paul_KD7HB:
Forget the hardware and software for now and concentrate on the the volume of data needed to be transmitted and the time frame for collecting that data. Once that is done, you will know how many bytes per second must be transmitted and from that you can design the communications that will support it.

Paul

What I really need from each MPU 6050 is 6 values, each a 16 bit integer (3 representing accelerometer values, 3 representing gyro values). Meaning each MPU 6050 needs to send 96 bits at once. I would need this values at least 5 times per second, so 480 bits/second or 60 bytes per second.

Multiply that by 10 sensors and it becomes 600 bytes per second or about 0.6 MB per second.

As far as I know, a single wifi chip can handle much more than this, so data rate is not exactly an issue. Or is it?

The data needs to be collected in real time.

#4

The standard Arduino has about 4000 bytes of memory, which is pretty limiting.

I suggest to get an Arduino and an MPU6050 and learn their capabilities before going much further.

#5