• Welcome aboard HomebuiltAirplanes.com, your destination for connecting with a thriving community of more than 10,000 active members, all passionate about home-built aviation. Dive into our comprehensive repository of knowledge, exchange technical insights, arrange get-togethers, and trade aircrafts/parts with like-minded enthusiasts. Unearth a wide-ranging collection of general and kit plane aviation subjects, enriched with engaging imagery, in-depth technical manuals, and rare archives.

    For a nominal fee of $99.99/year or $12.99/month, you can immerse yourself in this dynamic community and unparalleled treasure-trove of aviation knowledge.

    Embark on your journey now!

    Click Here to Become a Premium Member and Experience Homebuilt Airplanes to the Fullest!

Dynamic prop balancer accelerometer

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

WurlyBird

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 31, 2008
Messages
192
Location
North Pole, Alaska
I have been collecting parts in order to make some Arduino based accessories for my plane and a couple days a new idea popped into my head, here is the sequence of events. As I mentioned I am collecting sensors to attempt to make a glass panel for my plane. Before anyone gets upset about the safety aspect or the reliability of such a set up, I am doing it to learn more about Arduino, sensors, programming, and I just want to see if I can. My plane is VFR only and such a panel would be for entertainment only (I want to make a panel that resembles the glass panel in my helicopter :nervous:) and all instruments installed already will stay that way. On another website guys have been talking about Dyna Vibe prop balancers which I have seen mentioned before but never paid any attention to based solely on sticker shock. I watched a video of how they work and it is pretty **** simple. Light bulb. All you need is an accelerometer and a means of tracking and timing the prop, light, hall sensor, etc. The hard part would be the software, a.k.a. a new challenge. It would not be hard to permanently mount both of these devices which could give you the ability to monitor the health of the prop as well as get balance information while actually at cruise and not just at cruise RPM which would give you a little more accurate results.

So here is the question, what range accelerometer would be needed for this application?

I made a quick calculation using some arbitrary and excessive numbers and came up with about 7g which seems kinda low. This is probably an over simplified estimate and here is how I came up with it. If the engine vibrates 5mm (like I said excessive) at 2500 rpm and it is accelerating at a continuous rate, where d=(1/2)at^2, then a=2(d/t^2), so a=2(.005m/(.012s)^2)=69.4m/s^2. Anyone have any experience or knowledge about a setup like this?
 
Back
Top