Accelometers

New Technology

'I wanted to do something that no one knows about and that is in use in most daily used equipments... so, ACCELOMETERS'

First, What is accelometers? What does it do? When did it start?

Tiny new technology which helps iphone, digital cameras do wonders.Have you ever wondered how iphone’s cool features works ? How new laptops can protect their hard disk when it falls down ? How we get crisp images from a cameras even if we shake the device ? The answer is accelerometer.

Accelerometer in essence is not a new technology. Its been on the desk of researchers and scientists well from 1990s, but only recently with the help of latest technologies small scale accelerometers were made so that it can be used in the devices above mentioned.
Accelerometers are a special kind of device called MEMS- Micro Electro Mechanical System. There are various types of accelerometers. A simple one is having a cantilever beam which is suspended and some complex sensing circuitry. It converts the acceleration (force) to displacement which is then measured. New technology accelerometers looks nothing but like an IC (Integrated Circuit). It consists of a bubble producing system. It heats the gas bubble and another system senses the location of the hot bubble as the accelerometer is accelerated or tilted.

How and where does these accelometers are used?

- Apple Iphone uses accelerometer to sense the tilt of the phone, so that it can switch from portrait and landscape modes.

- New phones from Nokia such as 5500 uses accelerometers for many things. A small tap on the phone can control the music in phone. Nokia N95 and N70 also uses accelerometers. N95’s accelerometer function can be accessed even by third party software, but in N70 they use it only for tilt sensing in camera mode.

- Sony Ericsson use accelerometers in a wide range of phones. In their phones you just need to shake the phone to change tracks. There are J2ME games incorporating accelerometer functions.

- The Wii was a headache for the big players like Sony (PS) and Microsoft (Xbox). The Wii remote incorporate accelerometer for measuring tilt and movement so that it can be complemented on the screen.

- Famous shoe brands such as Nike uses it to determine speed, distance of the runner. They attach the accelerometer in their shoes which does the sensing part. The result is shown on some device such as watch, which are also produced by Nike.
- Leading laptops have a security feature that claims it uses new technology to protect the data at all cost, even if the laptop falls down. How? when the laptop falls down, the accelerometer picks the motion and the write current is turned off, so that the disk remains scratch free.
Cam coders and digital cameras use accelerometers for image stabilization and anti-blur capturing. They “snap” the CCD sensors in the cameras if they detect a movement.