A Simple, Low Cost Optical Tilt Sensor

For the purpose of kinematic monitoring system a prototype relatively simple and low cost optical Tilt (or inclination) sensor with sensitivity of 50mV/o and a working range of ±50o is presented in this paper. The sensor consists of a cylindrical shaped transparent container with half filled color liquid and an optical source and detector. The sensor principle based on temporal changes in light intensity due to variation of optical path length through a liquid medium with the tilt angel of sensor module. This change of light intensity detected by an optical detector & eventually processed by a signal processing circuit (SPC) to display the tilting (or inclination) value digitally. Proposed sensor's exhibits an accuracy of 0.8o and resolution of 0.09o respectively.