This actually sound a insanely cool thing to do. Imagine running some kind of software that can take the inputs and tell you how level your laptop is …
Oh, wait. No. You need a full-blown gyro for that.
But still. You can make simple cool things (how about a actual labyrinth game where you treat your entire laptop as the maze/imagine the uncomfort)
Right now it’s probably more than a gimmick. I have it enabled, though. Although currently it do nothing.
What a sensor like it used to do is to detect when a laptop falls. If it detect a collision/fall something, it try to immediately park the headers of the HDD so you don’t end up with a catastrophic failure with metal shards everywhere.
Of course, HDDs are a lone relic of the past (basically, except in desktops as a cheap mass storage solution), and this function is now useless.
A gyro detects rotational motion; an accelerometer detects linear acceleration (including gravity). You should be able to determine at least rough spacial orientation using an accelerometer.
I agree, just trying to clarify terminology for people who are less familiar. The CC3D is better classified as an IMU (inertial measurement unit) that combines an accelerometer and gyroscope to measure orientation and motion. The Accelerometer can detect linear motion (after integrating the output) and gravity direction for 3d orientation, but it’s bad at accounting for fine rotations required for flight stabilization. In contrast, the gyroscope is great at detecting rotations, but it cannot detect linear motion or orientation (just changes in orientation).
Some IMUs fuse in other sensors as well like magnetometers (for detecting magnetic fields like a compass) or barometers (for detecting altitude).
That’s enough of a side track for now. Hopefully it helps clear up the differences between sensor names brought up in this thread
Just a heads up, the G-Sensor option in the BIOS has been removed as of v3.06 Beta.
Not sure if it completely disables the accelerometer but anyone interested in experimenting with it should probably hold off on updating to the latest BIOS.
