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74 Posts
Clearing the air so don’t beat me up.
1. The necessity for inclinometers is debated
2. There are a plethora of inexpensive digital angle readers. None really seemed to fit what I wanted.
3. There are manual inclinometers that are very easy and require no power. I wanted digital.
4. My background is agriculture, and data engineering, and I like to tinker.
That being said, an inexpensive Arduino Uno clone, a basic 1.8” screen/button shield from Adafruit, some soldering, a MPU-6050 accelerometer/gyroscope, some trig, some C code, and I got something that works well. Angle colors change at predefined angle thresholds and I abused the joystick and buttons to allow a set or reset of the sensor, kind of like zeroing a scale and zeroing a scale with weight present, and control the refresh delay (defaults to 2s). Ambitious me might hardwire wire it off 12v and a relay, practical me might use a car lighter adapter with USB. Needs a better case and mounted in the 4066R, and maybe some quick offset angles dropped in if it isn’t mounted perfectly flat, but that’s it.
If anyone’s interested, glad to share the bill of materials, process, and code. Basic soldering skills (just headers and wires) and code is easy to customize. You can even throw a Deere logo on the screen. The MPU-6050 has a temp sensor in it too but it was ignored it for now.
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1. The necessity for inclinometers is debated
2. There are a plethora of inexpensive digital angle readers. None really seemed to fit what I wanted.
3. There are manual inclinometers that are very easy and require no power. I wanted digital.
4. My background is agriculture, and data engineering, and I like to tinker.
That being said, an inexpensive Arduino Uno clone, a basic 1.8” screen/button shield from Adafruit, some soldering, a MPU-6050 accelerometer/gyroscope, some trig, some C code, and I got something that works well. Angle colors change at predefined angle thresholds and I abused the joystick and buttons to allow a set or reset of the sensor, kind of like zeroing a scale and zeroing a scale with weight present, and control the refresh delay (defaults to 2s). Ambitious me might hardwire wire it off 12v and a relay, practical me might use a car lighter adapter with USB. Needs a better case and mounted in the 4066R, and maybe some quick offset angles dropped in if it isn’t mounted perfectly flat, but that’s it.
If anyone’s interested, glad to share the bill of materials, process, and code. Basic soldering skills (just headers and wires) and code is easy to customize. You can even throw a Deere logo on the screen. The MPU-6050 has a temp sensor in it too but it was ignored it for now.
