Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machinery Safety Blog#11 (Review & final thoughts)

14 Jan 2021

Experimenting with vibration sensors – Machinery safety Blog #11 (Review & Final Thoughts)

For those of you that have read my blogs, you might have a good idea how my review and final thoughts will be.

Review:

From the day I received the KEMET Vibration Sensor I had a good idea that this challenge will be fun. My proposal was to use the sensor to check machinery vibrations and shut it down when the vibrations were too much. I was originally going to use the Nucleo-144 but with a lot more experience with the Arduino, I used an Arduino Mega. As I started to create the program to run the vibration sensor, I saw a need to expand my original idea.

This is a basic timeline of my code:

Write code to read the sensor.
Add code to shut down machine when the vibration was too high.
1. What is too high?
2. How do we tell the relay switch if we don’t know what is too high?
3. Calibrate the sensor?
So, add code to calibrate the sensor (get average from 15 checks of the sensor over 10 seconds)
I need to see the vibration output away from the computer.
1. Add LCD display, problem solved.
Make it so you can set your own shut down limit.
1. I did this by adding a button. When you are prompted to set the % over average to shut down, you press the button until you reach the number you want to use.

So far so good, this all worked great (See blog #8). At this point my proposal is complete; machine shuts down when vibrations meet the parameter. But this wasn’t enough for me. This sensor is incredible, I need to experiment more. I guess it is time to change the code a little.

Needed to write code to run a different program so I can check the vibrations without the sensor shutting down.
1. After starting to write new code I had a thought, give the user a choice of which program to run instead of having to keep loading different programs.
2. Delete new code; add to original code with buttons to choose which script to run.
  1. Oh no, new programming territory, time to learn. (Proof, you’re never too old to learn new things.
3. It was quite easy, create functions!!
Now that works great, I want to see a graph of the output.
1. Solution, add a oscilloscope to my Arduino. Not good solution, missing to many electronic part to make it work.
2. New solution, Arduino IDE has one built in. Since all the rest of my experiments were at the computer I had the IDE show me the graph.
Like I said, to much fun. Code complete.

The code is uploaded in my blogs for anyone who wants to see. The KEMET Vibration Sensor is the best I ever had the privilege to use and the one I have had the most fun with. I am still experimenting!!

Final thoughts:

I am so thankful to have been chosen to be part of this challenge. The sensor is incredible; the sensitivity picks up the slightest vibration. With the machines, the calibration averaged 513Hz; I set the sensor at 5% shutdown limit (538.65Hz) which I found was the adequate limit. Since the code was written to calibrate the average then add the 5%, made it work on any machine.

I could keep talking about how much I love this sensor and its abilities, but I would just be repeating myself.

I really hope we can have other challenges with different KEMET sensors.

Thank you KEMET for sponsoring this challenge, you made the past 2 months very enjoyable through these tough times. Your VSBV20 Vibration Sensor is incredible and I will tell everyone about it.

Thank you Element14 for everything you do for us and hosting these challenges.

Thank you Element14 community for being the best group I belong to!!

My Blogs:

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machinery Safety

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machine Safety Blog #2

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machinery Safety Blog 3 (Information)

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machine Safety Blog#4

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machinery Safety Blog #5

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machine Safety Blog #6

Experimenting with vibration sensors - Machinery Safety (Sort of) Blog #7

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machinery Safety Blog#8 (It's working)

Experimenting with Vibration Sensors - Machinery Safety Blog #9 (More photos)