Recording Accelerometer Data and Triggering a Motor

Using Arduino Project Guidance
#1

I'm working on a project where I need to record accelerometer and gyroscope data (to be accessed on a computer later), as well as use the accelerometer to trigger a motor at a certain point. I'm not too worried about coding it, except I need to know if that is possible with an arduino. I am also not very knowledgeable on hardware.

For the hardware I was looking at, I was planning on getting the IMU Digital Combo Board - ITG3200/ADXL345 to serve as my accelerometer and gyroscope SparkFun 6 Degrees of Freedom IMU Digital Combo Board - ITG3200/ADXL345 - SEN-10121 - SparkFun Electronics.

For the motor, I want to use this small 5v solenoid Solenoid - 5V (Small) - ROB-11015 - SparkFun Electronics.

I was thinking of using the Arduino Uno as my board but if there's a smaller option, I would prefer it. I have no idea what to use for a lightweight power source. As far as I have read, the motor requires its own power supply and a transistor to trigger it, although I have no idea how to connect that to the Arduino. The whole system only needs to operate for about a minute or two so a low capacity power supply could probably be an option if it is smaller.

Any information or guidance would be greatly appreciated!!! If you need any additional information, just ask.

#2

Welcome!

The arduino uno should be able to read the IMU (with bildr library) and send to the PC over usb serial port. On the pc side, you need to know how to program in your preferred language to open a serial port and read its stream of texts. I would probably use Processing to do that and save data to a text file.

For the motor or actuator, it would need to you use a transistor to drive. I don't know about battery but maybe a rechargeable smart phone power bank can do it. If you prototype is successful, you can go to smaller size arduino or just the bare chip. Then the size of your device is close to the size of you battery + solenoid.

#3