The “sensor” I’m most interested in for a class project is really just a camera interfaced with the OpenCV software. So there isn’t anything specific I can point to for this assignment. But! There’s an alternative sensor I’m interested in, for completely different purposes.
This is a breakout board for an ADXL377 High-G Triple-Axis Accelerometer.
It can sense up to 200g’s! Which, in technical terms, is “a whole boat load of g’s.” Probably more than we need, but it’s good to have headroom. It measures on an X, Y and Z axis, this basically means every possible direction. What could we use this for? Well in a theatrical environment, you could have dancers wearing them, and the faster a dancer moves, the faster lights flash or drums beat. You can also use them as safety sensors – if a scenic piece is moving too fast, you can activate an E-stop. And I believe they can be used as location trackers as well – I assume you start with a zero reference location somewhere, and measure all changes in direction from that point.
The breakout board is from Sparkfun – http://www.adafruit.com/products/1413#Description
And a datasheet can be found here – http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/609/ADXL377-246397.pdf
