Poll: What Kinds of Experiments Would You Conduct With Vibration Sensors?

We are currently enrolling applicants for our Experimenting with Vibration Sensors Challenge. In this challenge, you will get a vibration sensor, an MCU board and a Bluetooth expansion board. (BTW... the grand prize is a Microsoft Surface Pro X laptop/tablet and the runner up prize is an Apple Series 5 smart watch.)

You can submit an application here: https://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/create-roadTestApp!input.jspa?containerID=3071&container…

What can you do with vibration sensors?

Vibrations provide an engineer with a lot of information about a system. In the real world, this data can be utilized in condition monitoring or predictive maintenance. To this end, the Experimenting with Vibration Sensors Design Challenge is a hands-on competition that gives our members the opportunity to experiment with vibration sensors and blog about what they did.

Poll Question: What Kinds of Experiments Would You Conduct With Vibration Sensors?

For more information about this competition, go here: https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-95559/l/experimenting-with-vibration-sensors-about-the-competition?ICID=exp…

Top Comments

dougw over 4 years ago in reply to alainlavanchy

It definitely would work - it just a pretty tough place to mount instrumentation.
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alainlavanchy over 4 years ago in reply to parasquid

It really would be attachted to the train itself, close to the connection between the main chassis and the wheels. As I'm only a DIY-maker and not an engineer I don't know if it would work though :-)
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gpolder over 4 years ago

mount it on my bike, together with an GPS, and map bicycle path quality.
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parasquid over 4 years ago in reply to alainlavanchy

I think this is interesting How would you do the experiment though? Would you actually attach it to a train or tramway or will you do it by proxy?
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dougw over 4 years ago

I did an experiment on element14 trying to measure the resonant frequency of a tank. I could have used a decent vibration sensor.
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alainlavanchy over 4 years ago

I was thinking on a vibration monitoring system for trains and tramways. If too much vibration occurs, and many times also connected to a lot of noise, the speed is lowered.
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genebren over 4 years ago

I once worked on a custom machining device that used a vibration sensor to determine tool loading during the manufacturing process. The tool would be moved into the work, while monitoring vibrations imparted onto the tool, until the value fell within the normal range. Too little vibration and not enough work would be occurring. Too much vibration and you were likely to wear out the tool too quickly.
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bobalexander over 4 years ago

If the sensor was a little more sensitive and less... industrial, I would develop a dynamic propeller balancing system.
Mount the sensor to the airframe with a light break to detect RPM/prop location and run up engine to detect imbalances and process the data to determine where and how much weight needs to be added/removed.
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