rec.autos.simulators

I've been reading this group for a while now, but this is my first
post.

I'm interested in digitally recording the motion of a car for the
purpose of a 3D animation. It's a hobby project, so my budget is
limited to around $200 Australian. I'm open to suggestions. I would
like to be able to know the position of the car's chassis in three
dimensions, sampling data at least ten times per second. The
recordings themselves will be a few minutes long at most. The car will
be driving in a relatively flat, open and limited area.

At present, my best idea involves three triaxial accelerometers and a
microprocessor interfacing with a PC using a serial interface. Has
anybody here done this before? What did you use?

All help is greatly appreciated.

Bruce Sutherland.

The Valentine Research g-Analyst was the first low cost data system that I
know about, has 3 accelerometers, but the display that comes with it only
plots lateral and longitudinal.  With an external home-built circuit it
was possible to get the vertical accel too.  Long out of production, but
many people still use them.

Here is one link that discusses a newer data box, there are many
companies that supply data systems--
  http://www.scuderiaciriani.com/rx7/radar.html

I think that you might have to do a lot of work yourself if you really want
to stick to that low budget.  Or maybe you can buy a used system, car
racers are always trading up to fancier stuff.

-- Doug Milliken
   www.millikenresearch.com/rcvdpae.html  <--- brand new book

Maybe if you contacted them they would tell you how to get all
three accelerations out of their serial interface?  It's a small
company so they might be interested in your application...

Let RAS know what you learn!

-- Doug
   www.millikenresearch.com/rcvdpae.html  <-- new book