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• Created by

  Nigel
• Created on Apr 15, 2010
• Featured on Apr 16, 2010

This is a mounting bracket for attaching a sparkfun accelerometer (part number SEN00252) to a bicycle.

Why bother mounting an accelerometer to a bike, you ask? This accelerometer mount is part of a larger project. The idea is to map out the roughness of various bike paths in the city I live in. What I want to do is rapidly sample the acceleration generated on the bike frame by the bumps in the bike paths over a few seconds. I'll then write the peak acceleration to the memory card and tag this data with GPS information so I know where the data was captured. Once I have completed my bike ride, I'll use Processing (http://processing.org) to crunch the numbers and generate colour-coded blobs to give me a visual representation of the roughness of the bike path along the route I've taken. I'll lay this data over a map of the area, and voila! I will have easy-to-understand information about which paths in the city are in good shape and which ones are to be avoided. (or repaired!)

Now, the hardware details:

I have an Arduino with a GPS logger shield from Adafruit. (http://adafruit.com) This allows me to capture positional data and log it to a text file, along with any other information I'd like to record.

I have selected a three-axis accelerometer breakout board from Sparkfun. (http://sparkfun.com) This will allow three-axis acceleration measurement of up to 6g.

The only thing missing is a sturdy bracket to mount the accelerometer to the bike frame...