Even better, there are a bunch of pre-packaged, integrated digital acellerometers out there that you can get, hook up to some sort of microcontroller, and write the software. I believe that these are mostly based on a capacitative sensor rather than a piezo sensor ... but since the analog to digital translation and calibration are already done for you, it doens't matter.
The ones I'm familiar with come in a variety of parts with different sensitivities from +/- 2G to +/- 200G full scale. They generally emit a serial pulse stream of counts, so all the microcontroller has to do is count the pulses and then translate the accumulated count into the number of interest.
Take a look at Silicon Designs model 1010 or Analog Devices iMEMS (ADXLxxx) parts. The Analog Devices line has parts designed for use in airbag deployment sensors, among other things.
I've you're nice and polite (and can fake some letterhead), you may be able to get one or two of the parts as engineering samples.
(no subject)
The ones I'm familiar with come in a variety of parts with different sensitivities from +/- 2G to +/- 200G full scale. They generally emit a serial pulse stream of counts, so all the microcontroller has to do is count the pulses and then translate the accumulated count into the number of interest.
Take a look at Silicon Designs model 1010 or Analog Devices iMEMS (ADXLxxx) parts. The Analog Devices line has parts designed for use in airbag deployment sensors, among other things.
I've you're nice and polite (and can fake some letterhead), you may be able to get one or two of the parts as engineering samples.