I am totally new to Arduino and have limited knowledge of electronics in general.
I am looking to create a "first draft" of sorts for a system that will trigger a LED to light up and stay on when a structure is dropped from maybe 30 cm onto a table. Eventually I would be looking to build something much more complex capable of sensing acceleration duration and magnitude in 3 axes. It must be stand-alone (not attached to a computer at the time), as small as possible, and easily resetable. After reading the Arduino website, forums, and blogs today, I am considering using an accelerometer attached to an Arduino Uno with a battery power supply.
Is this project feasible? Any advice would be greatly appreciated (sensor or board type, etc...).
It has a hard Polyethlene shell covering about 14 mm of softer material and weighs about 0.5 kg. I had envisioned mounting the board to the inside of the hard shell with the LED poking through. The accelerometer would more likely be suspended with the 14 mm somehow.
It will be possible and quite easy to make the initial test.
You could use a piezo to test vibrations. This one works okay but shop around because there are loads out there.
This could turn the LED on upon impact.
It's a great place to start if you are new, although for your prototype it could be considered a little big. If you're going to use it again for other prototypes get the uno or MEGA. If not then shop for something smaller.
Proto-pic is a good UK site, I don't know where you live though.
One issue with this for me.. It will have to be turned on all the time which will use a lot of battery power. Do you know how you are planning on powering it?
I'm in Canada, I will do an internet search for a supplier here.
I will likely only be using the board for this and future generations of this idea. I assume I can reuse the board again? Something small is preferable as space is limited inside the structure. I was thinking of using a 9V battery to start and then refining the power supply to something smaller and likely more suited to the application. If I unplug the battery from the board, will it remember the program? Sorry this is very new to me; I usually deal with biological research.
since it's such a small application you might want to build a prototype with an arduino uno and then learn to program your own microcontroller with PICAXE. This will save you a lot of battery life in the long run.
Also, take a look at Fritzing. I think you'll find it a useful tool to get to grips with how everything works/schematics and the like.