MOD-MMA7260

Supplying the ARM7 with a USB interface and a serial flash memory, opens up possibilities to implement a lot of interesting projects with this small board. The original idea for this board was inspired by the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruise instead of a mouse used his hands to interface with the computers from the future. By searching on the net for more info on this subject we found a similar project here. It doesn't look bad but the accelerometers used are 2 axis and the whole project was done in a way too complex way. Our goal was to make a PCB small enough to be able to attach to your finger and with a mini USB connector to be able to connect it to any PC running Windows as well as use it as a 3d mouse i.e. when you move your finger left /right-up-down/ to move your mouse cursor in the same manner and if you move your finger towards the screen to activate the mouse "click" action.

This of course is not the limit to the applications of this board. Another cool application which can be made with it is for instance a car performance logger: as we have the acceleration and the time can be measured by the microcontroller, we can easily compute the velocity V = A * t, then the distance S = V * t. Since the accelerometer is a 3-axis one, we can calculate at what distance in 3D space the object moves. If we know your car's mass, we can calculate the force applied F = m * A and from this we can calculate your real car power P = V * A. So having this little board inside your car and knowing your car's mass, you could calculate your car's characteristics in real time: Acceleration (0-100 kmh / 0-60mph), Braking distance, Horsepower, etc. and remember that these are the actual measurements of your car not the catalogue data. Yet another application is to measure the vibrations and shock on objects. For instance, put one such device with a battery power supply inside your parcel before sending it by FedEx and then the recipient dumps the info logged - what time it took to transport, what velocity the parcel had, was it dropped on the floor (i.e. at what max shock it was exposed), at what time was it actually moved and with what speed, how many times did it stay at rest (i.e. it didn't move) and that way you can evaluate the different couriers' efficiency this way.