Setting-up an Accelerometer - Success!

Earlier today I met with one of the residents at ITP to discuss the issues that I have been encountering with my 3-axis accelerometer (ADXL335). After meeting for a mere 5 minutes, Ithai informed me that the issue was likely being caused by the fact that I did not solder the leads into the breakout board. My initial instinct to NOT solder the header pins to the board in case the accelerometer was not working proved to be overly cautious.

Here are the charts featuring the latest data I collected from the accelerometer


The good news is that the accelerometer is now working, and I only pulled out a few hairs in the process. Now that this accelerometer is working I have a few additional learnings and resources to share with anyone working on hooking up an accelerometer. I hope these can help you get up and running without any hair pulling:

1. Make sure that you have soldered the pins to your accelerometer breakout board before starting to test.
2. Use the AREF pin on the Arduino to set the reference voltage to 3v and improve the sensor readings.
3. Use a running average of all readings or some other stabilization algorithm to help reduce noise from accelerometer readings.
4. Check out the code samples below for different ways to test your new accelerometer.
5. Whichever axis is in vertical position will have a different sensor reading due to gravity, even when resting.
6. The sensor for each axis is only able to alternate resistance by +-15%.

Code Sample 1 – As Simple as You Can Get

int xAxis = 0;
int yAxis = 1;
int zAxis = 2;
int zInput = 0;
int yInput = 0;
int xInput = 0;

void setup () {
  Serial.begin(9600); 
}

void loop () {
  xInput = analogRead(xAxis);
  delay (10);
  yInput = analogRead(yAxis);
  delay (10);
  zInput = analogRead(zAxis);
  delay (10);
  
  Serial.print("Inpu (xyz): ");
  Serial.print(xInput);
  Serial.print(", ");
  Serial.print(yInput);
  Serial.print(", ");
  Serial.print(zInput);
  Serial.println(".");
}

Code Sample 2 – Capture Base Readings and Then Report Difference from Base
This sample was developed by Andy Davidson, and taken from the Arduino message boards.

/* ADXL335test6
 Test of ADXL335 accelerometer
 Andy Davidson
 */

const boolean debugging = true;    // whether to print debugging to serial output
const boolean showBuffer = false;  // whether to dump details of ring buffer at each
read

const int xPin = 0;  // analog: X axis output from accelerometer
const int yPin = 1;  // analog: Y axis output from accelerometer
const int zPin = 2;  // analog: Z axis output from accelerometer
const int led = 13;  // just to blink a heartbeat while running

const int totalAxes = 3;  // for XYZ arrays: 0=x, 1=y, 2=z

const int baseSamples = 1000;  // number of samples to average for establishing
zero g base
const int bufferSize = 16;     // number of samples for buffer of data for running
average
const int loopBlink = 100;     // number of trips through main loop to blink led

// array of pin numbers for each axis, so the constants above can be chnaged with
impunity
const int pin [totalAxes] = {
  xPin, yPin, zPin};


// base value for each axis - zero g offset (at rest when sketch starts)
int base [totalAxes];

// ring buffer for running average of data, one for each axis, each with  
samples
int buffer [totalAxes] [bufferSize];

// index into ring buffer of next slot to use, for each axis
int next [totalAxes] = {
  0,0,0};

// current values from each axis of accelerometer
int curVal [totalAxes];

// count of trips through main loop, modulo blink rate
int loops = 0;



void setup() {


  long sum [totalAxes]= {  // accumulator for calculating base value of each axis
    0,0,0        };


  Serial.begin   (9600);
  Serial.println ("***");

  // initialize all pins
  pinMode (led, OUTPUT);
  for (int axis=0; axis
    pinMode (pin [axis], INPUT);    // not necessary for analog, really

  // read all axes a bunch of times and average the data to establish zero g offset
  // chip should be at rest during this time
  for (int i=0; i
    for (int axis=0; axis
      sum [axis] += analogRead (pin [axis]);
  for (int axis=0; axis
    base [axis] = round (sum [axis] / baseSamples);

  // and display them
  Serial.print ("*** base: ");
  for (int axis=0; axis
    Serial.print (base [axis]);
    Serial.print ("\t");
  }
  Serial.println ();
  Serial.println ("***");

  // initialize the ring buffer with these values so the averaging starts off right
  for (int axis=0; axis
    for (int i=0; i
      buffer [axis] [i] = base [axis];

  // light up the led and wait til the user is ready to start (sends anything on serial)
  // so that the base values don't immediately shoot off the top of the serial window
  digitalWrite (led, HIGH);
  while (!Serial.available()) 
    /* wait for  */    ;
  digitalWrite (led, LOW);

}



void loop() {

  //increment the loop counter and blink the led periodically

  loops = (loops + 1) % loopBlink;
  digitalWrite (led, loops == 0);
  // get new data from each axis by calling a routine that returns
  // the running average, instead of calling analogRead directly

  for (int axis=0; axis
    curVal [axis] = getVal (axis, showBuffer);
    if (debugging) {
      Serial.print (curVal [axis]);
      Serial.print ("\t");
    }
  }
  if (debugging)   
    Serial.println ();

  // here we will do all of the real work with curVals

}



int getVal (int axis, boolean show) {

  // returns the current value on , averaged across the previous  
reads
  // print details if  is true


  long sum;  // to hold the total for aaveraging all values in the buffer


  // read the data into the next slot in the buffer and stall for a short time
  // to make sure the ADC can cleanly finish multiplexing to another pin

  buffer [axis] [next [axis]] = analogRead (pin [axis]);
  delay (10);    // probably not necessary given the stuff below

  // display the buffer if requested

  if (show) {
    for (int i=0; i
      if (i == next [axis]) Serial.print ("*");
      Serial.print (buffer [axis] [i]);
      Serial.print (" ");
    }
    Serial.println ();
  }

  // bump up the index of the next available slot, wrapping around

  next [axis] = (next [axis] + 1) % bufferSize;

  // add up all the values and return the average,
  // taking into account the offset for zero g base

  sum = 0;
  for (int i=0; i
    sum += buffer [axis] [i];

  return (round (sum / bufferSize) - base [axis]);

}