Cheaper accelerometer chip
Retroactively posted March 19, 2005
This is a cute development.
These are pin-compatible replacement chips for our favorite Analog Devices accelerometers. Instead of a capacitive MEMS sensor, these apparently are a high-tech version of a bubble level: they use an array of temperature sensors to pin down the displacement of a heated air bubble on two axes in response to motion or gravity.
The disadvantage is that the response time isn't quite as good: they recommend running around 20Hz, though you can boost that at the cost of noise. But the accuracy is comparable, the shock-resistance is much higher, and the real advantage is that the cost is less than half of the ADXL202: $8 in unit quantities.