I've thought of trying a cheapie like having some conductive plastic
(I can reach over & put my hands on it, don't remember what it is & it's
out of the package) that changes resistance due to pressure;  Put a pad
of this on each of the 4 corners of a cube-shaped weight, then use
differential resistances to get a really rough, really cheap
inclinometer reading.  OT but I may try it for the "Keydler" as a cheap
alternative!

  Mark Willis, mwillis@nwlink.com

Peter L. Peres wrote:
>
> On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Ken Adamson wrote:
>
> > Yup - ball bearing in a cage will not work if you give it circular
> > acceleration to deal with - coordinated aircraft turns yield a net
> > additional force on an occupant at the center of gravity of zero - so a ball
> > bearing wouldn't even see the tilt, since the net force vector is normal to
> > the plane of the cage :)
>
> Oops, no-one said this has to have more than 1 axis, so no-one thought of
> airplanes.
>
> The real reason of ball bearings in cages not working right is, that the
> friction coefficient and load vector dependency of a ball bearing destroys
> any hope to be able to calibrate the thing for everyday use. Doing some
> maths you'd end up with 5 pound lead weights on 1 foot sattelite bars to
> be able to get below 1% accuracy in a well-controlled environment. 1% of
> 360 degrees is 3.6 degrees FYI, way way under what can be achieved with a
> piezo, let alone a force feedback or capacitive sensor worth, as said,
> from $15 up ;).
>
> Peter