External Accelerometer.. plausible?

[zerodayATK]

I read somewhere (ppc geeks or here) about someone working on an external accelerometer. Does anybody know if it worked? I've been doing research myself and I'm just not familiar with windows mobile and the way the vogue uses the USB port. Does winmo have "joystick" drivers? does anybody know if you can connect periphreals to the vogue/winmo?

[jadesse]

NOT LIKELY TO HAPPEN. There was a project trying to get a Wii remote to work with the Dell Axim but I don't think that went very far.

[EyeMWing]

Actually, this is extremely plausible.

Sitting right here in the work lab, I have prefab prototype boards with accelerometers on them that output serial data, and a bluetooth prototype board that takes serial data and spits it over SPP bluetooth.

It's then just a matter of, in software, taking that data and converting it to the format that internal accelerometers would use, and putting it in the same place.

Just as a proof of concept, I took a pretty expensive inertial measurement unit (3 accelerometer axes, 3 gyroscope axes and 3 magnetic compass axes, built in SPP bluetooth module: worth about $500 - take that, iPhone users) and just paired that to my phone. It works and I get data streams off of it, but I have neither the time nor inclination (nor the necessary mobile development skills) to write software for it.

[zerodayATK]

Cool! I was looking into something similar, albeit on a smaller budget:p. I'm going to ask around to codybear or some other experienced winmo programmer to see about getting some code written.

[EyeMWing]

Well obviously an IMU well suited to flying a UAV isn't the best piece of equipment for this job, but if we strip it down to the really essential components

The bluetooth radio (I've got a list price of $34 for a single unit)
The sensor (I've got a 3-axis 1.2g sensitivity unit listed for $40)
A microcontroller to turn the analog output from the sensor into a useful TTL (serial) stream ($2 buys you one that's complete and total overkill for this)

Just add a custom PCB to mount it all to - I reckon we're only looking at a few square inches, a few extra components to deal with electrical supply, some ninja soldering skill, some microcontroller programming skillz, some smartphone programming skillz, and the whole thing could plausibly cost about $80 if you were only building one prototype (and etched the circuit board yourself)

[codybear]

Someone was working on this,
but scrapped the project because of something that made it not work and was really hard not to get it working. haha.
That sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, but there was a big discussion I had with Whosdaman (I believe) at ppcgeeks, and he explained it in technical terms.

Short answer is, no.
It's possible, but you'd end up paying more for the item than just upgrading due to the time it takes to engineer the drivers for the phone, program for the phone to run it, etc etc.
Search at ppcgeeks and you should be able to find the conversation.