We needed a way to measure forces on the suspension components of our student built solar powered car. We decided to use a Bean+ because it has an accelerometer sensor, bluetooth capabilities, and needs no external power supply. We attached the Bean+ to our suspension using a 3D printed case and connected to it with an IOS device using bluetooth. We drove the car over various bumps, turns, starts and stops and easily measured the acceleration. Data were displayed using the Bean Console which is available from the app store. (The bean Loader is not able to display serial data at this time.) The collected data were exported from Bean Console via email and plotted on a desktop computer using Excel. The plots below show the acceleration of the suspension upright (basically the vertical acceleration of the wheel) measured while driving the car over a 4" high bump (seen in the cover image above made from stacked 2x4's). We collected acceleration data at 100 millisecond intervals.
The whole process took about half an hour from concept to finish showing how powerful the Bean+ is and how easy it is to set up and use.
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