From the forums: Using Adafruit Metro to revolutionize Physics Labs
Adafruit forums user vadabit posted up to tell us about his latest project for his physics honors course. He writes:
My Name is Sidharta (Sid). I am a 9th Grader in NJ (Montgomery High School) doing Physics Honors course. Although we have good equipment to measure velocity and acceleration (on a ramp), the equipment was expensive and somewhat cumbersome.
I have been playing with Adafruit’s electronics for almost 2 years now (my dad – Kumar Vadaparty — bought a lot of stuff from you and taught me a lot)….and thought why can’t I build one to measure these in a modable, affordable and portable tool.
I built one using your Metro (it is a great Arduino) and IR sensors (they are cheap — $2/pair) — it came out great. I published 3 articles in Instructables explaining (a) the Physics (b) the mechanical building of it using Laser Cutting at Philadelphia’s Next FabLab (c) The electronics & Code. The code is in Github.
Adafruit Metro Mini 328 – 5V 16MHz: We sure love the ATmega328 here at Adafruit, and we use them a lot for our own projects. The processor has plenty of GPIO, Analog inputs, hardware UART SPI and I2C, timers and PWM galore – just enough for most simple projects. When we need to go small, we use a Pro Trinket 3V or 5V, but if you want to have USB-to-Serial built in, we reach for an Adafruit METRO Mini. Read more.
IR Break Beam Sensor – 3mm LEDs: Infrared (IR) break-beam sensors are a simple way to detect motion. They work by having an emitter side that sends out a beam of human-invisible IR light, then a receiver across the way which is sensitive to that same light. When something passes between the two, and its not transparent to IR, then the ‘beam is broken’ and the receiver will let you know. Read more.
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