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I work in the geology field and most gravimeters are very cost prohibitive for our small company. I read an article a while ago about the invention of a small MEMS gravimeter called the Newton-G, and I also saw an article in Nuts and Volts magazine about how to build a small portable gravimeter that they called King Tuts Pyramid Gravimeter. (See links below). I was thinking of trying to make something like the King Tut version but using a MEMS accelerometer instead of the resistance-based detector they created. Would a device like this be possible to build using maybe Arduino components? The only other DIY gravimeter info I could find is on a website called Rexresearch. I am an avid DIYer and unfortunately do not know much about electronics but am willing to learn.
I don’t think an accelerometer would work for this. I imagine for them to work they would need to self calibrate to different altitudes or just do not have a high enough resolution to be useful for that. They ratio of mass to spring wouldn’t be high enough I do not believe.
In my opinion given what I know about conductive foam I don’t think that Nuts N Volts project would be useful for a gravimeter.
Commonly available MEMS accelerometers lack the sensitivity and error mitigation mechanisms necessary for gravimetric work. If it were possible to just to walk over to the Kwik-E Mart and pick up an accelerometer that’d give good measurements for $4.95, there would be no reason for the newton folks to develop anything, nor for the industry-standard equipment to be cost prohibitive.
As for the nuts & volts article… It’s cute and I’d fully expect that it would show a value that changes enough to be amusing, but the chances of it producing meaningful data are…not very good…
Thank you very much for your reply and your opinion. I was only able to put two links in my original post and there was one more website that had info about a DIY gravimeter but, again, my limited knowledge keeps me from determining if it is a plausible working device. If you have time and are interested the link is below. The website has some schematics and a parts list. Thank you again for your help I appreciate it.
I remember reading about these inventions in radio electronics and popular electronics back in the 70s/80s.
IIRC, eventually real experts in metrology and physics looked at these and determined they were about as useful and reliable as ghost locating devices. I think there even were follow on articles from experts showing what electromagnetic spectrum phenomenon the circuits were actually indicating.
Since that time I’ve had them in the category of homemade perpetual motion machines, they fool the builders into thinking they actually work.
In case you are interested I just found this interesting very short article on a miniaturized gravimeter using magnets and a laser. Does not sound like a DIY project but its interesting.
