SINGLE-AXIS TILT-SENSOR SYSTEMS

This paper presents two designs for low–cost tilt-sensor systems. The first design uses a tilt-sensing element, which consists an electrolytic resistive bridge for single-axis measurements. The second design uses a tilt sensor with capacitive detection. In both designs the electronic signal processing has been realized using the Universal Transducer Interface (UTI) and a microcontroller. For the resistive element, experimental results show a standard deviation of about 1 arcsec for a measurement time of 1 s and a rather linear behaviour. The main advantage of capacitive sensing element concerns the simplicity of the construction. However, its performance is inferior to that of the resistive elements.