A wireless tilt sensor based on plastic optical fiber and Arduino board microcontroller

In this paper, a tilt sensor based on Arduino board microcontroller and four plastic optical fibers which are orthogonally set up onto a pendulum for 2-D tilt measurement is presented. The pendulum structure is formed by suspending a heavy weight with a spring. When the sensor is sloped, the pendulum will stretch or bend plastic optical fibers to change the output power. From the intensity of the received illumination of each photoresistor and the digital conversion via Arduino microcontroller, we can obtain the azimuth and tilt angle of the inclined direction. The proposed sensor can be achieved of azimuth 0° to 360° measurement. And the measured tilt angle ranges from 0° to 15°. The resolution of the sensor is 1°. Furthermore, the conversion results of Arduino microcontrollers will be uploaded via Wi-Fi to the ThingSpeak platform. So, no matter personal computer, tablet or smartphone, all can real time monitor the result of the tilt of the test object by Internet.