Measuring the inertial force on a person when riding a roller coaster is an interesting challenge, especially when the coaster has a downhill drop of more than 45m and eight inversions. That is exactly what the Dragon Khan of PortAventura in Europe offers riders. To measure the inertial force on this and the Shambhala, a second rollercoaster with a run over 1650 meters long, engineers used Libelium’s Waspmote, a wireless sensor node, with an integrated 3-axis accelerometer to measure inertial forces up to ±8g. At the end of each ride, the Waspmote sent the data to a smartphone using a Wi-Fi module, one of its available wireless interfaces. Spikes above 4g were recorded in the Z-axis.

For more information about the Libelium Waspmote and the rollercoaster testing, click here.

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