Tennis Racket Accelerometer

Projects General Guidance
1

I am starting a new project in which I want to use an arduino and accelerometer to measure the swing speed of a tennis racket. I am very new to arduino ( I have never used one before). Just to get started I was wondering which boards would work with the ADXL3xx. The website says that you need an arduino but does that mean any arduino would work, like an arduino nano? Since this is going onto a tennis racket, size is a factor and while it doesn't necessarily have to look pretty It would be awesome if a small board such as the nano would work. Another question I have it whether a USB can be used to store information gathered by the accelerometer. I understand that the information will be sent from the accelerometer to the arduino board (which ever kind is being used) but would it be possible to store this information onto a USB? Since this is going onto a tennis racket it would not be able to be plugged directly into a computer while its being used, so I need a way to store the information while swinging the tennis racket.

Thanks

2

Every Arduino can read data from serial, SPI or I2C devices.

Data can be stored in SRAM or EEPROM, for later output to some port (USB...). The available memory is controller specific, it limits the amount of data that can be stored temporarily. External memory chips can be added, to increase the amount of available memory.

Or you send the data immediately, using some wireless connection.

3

Measuring the racket speed is a complex 6- or 7-dimensional problem. I would start from an MPU6050 rather than any ADXL.

Turning acceleration into position is the usual question asked here. That is a staggeringly difficult problem. Errors quickly accumulate into kilometers in just a few seconds or minutes. If you are only interested in speed then your errors may be manageable but you will be surprised at the lengths you need to go to to avoid problems. How are you at Quaternions?