This week our individual assignment was: "measure something: add a sensor to a microcontroller board that you have designed and read it".

This week I opted to design and build an accelerometer since I think it might be a nice addition to my final project, a bluetooth motorcycle helmet. Next week I will try to output the accelerometer's information to an LED screen. I'd like to find a screen small enough that I could position it in the peripheral vision of my helment's viewport. This was I could see the speed in my peripheral without taking my eyes off the road.

The process went well this week, there were only two minor setbacks. I milled my board on the first shot and went straight to soldering. I had a little trouble with reflowing the ADXL343 but got it on and went to program. When the program didn't work I re-reflowed my ADLX343 and then noticed that I had misread the schematic. What I thought was two 1uf capacitors was actually a 1 and a .1, and with that fixed it worked like charm!

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