Accelerometer not working on rotating test vehicle

[DocSnuggles]

I made a test vehicle in order to get a giant centrifuge based on the rocket start table. As you see in the video clip I mounted an accelerometer at the outside probe of the vehicle but when i start rotating the thing, the accelerometer only measures the kerbin acceleration itself.

So it seems that the accelerometer isnt working. I also tried mech-jeb to get some proper information but this isn´t working too. Eva the Kerbal and switching to an outside probe changes nothing.

Any ideas how to get acceleration date of the outside probes?

video >

craft file > http://www./?eq92yp90n64ota4

[Jason Patterson]

I wonder if the accelerometer only lists the acceleration of the CoM of the vehicle, rather than the acceleration of the accelerometer itself. Just a thought.

[Finnerty]

I looked at the video and I don't think your accelerating fast enough to show much. It did jump to 1.03 a couple times. I've never used this accelerometer, but I'd say a good test would be to launch a rocket with one of these attached somewhere, like on a Stayputnik satellite. That will tell you if the thing works at all.

[Jason Patterson]

Well, I tried building a helicopter rotor with accelerometers both on the hub and at the ends of the blades. When it was ascending both accelerometers read the same value (1.5g in this case, though it ought to have read 1g, since it was ascending at more or less constant, incredibly slow, velocity.) After killing the engines and allowing the vehicle to fall, the accelerometers dropped to close to zero (free fall) then rose back to 1g after it hit terminal velocity.

I have to think that this is measuring the CoM's acceleration only, and that it is not terribly accurate even there.

[DocSnuggles]

Ok... the diameter of the construction is about ~250m and one complete rotation takes about 38 seconds. If i do the math right there should be an acceleration of ~3m/s² = 0,3g at the side points. Not enough to say that the accelerometer isn´t working.

So i tried another construction with an smaller diameter but able to rotate faster. The diameter now is about 100m and one rotation takes about 6 seconds. And again... if my copy and paste math´s are right there should be an acceleration of more than 5g to meassure. But nothing more is showen than the 1g of kerbal.

> http://youtu.be/KF5gK7M8do0

[DocSnuggles]

Finally I got some G´s . I had to decouple a probe a the outside of the centrifuge. Then switching to this probe and then i got some results. But it´s sad that the game is crashing my pc by calculating all the parts interacting to each other and on the other hand it fails at simple logics.

Edited May 20, 2013 by DocSnuggles

[Finnerty]

Hey, patience paid off, it works, and your numbers guesstimate was pretty accurate too. Puts some lights on this thing and it'll look like the Kerbal Carnival is in town.