Publication Date

2016

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Zinger, Donald S.||Johnson, Timothy

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Electrical Engineering

LCSH

Weight lifting; Muscle strength--Measurement; Physical fitness--Measurement; Accelerometers--Design and construction--Computer simulation; Electric meters--Design and construction--Computer simulation

Abstract

Lifting weights is a popular and effective strength training method to gain muscles and lose weight. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this exercise, knowledge of power spent in each lift is required. A weightlifting power meter is the tool that estimates the amount of power associated with lifting an object. Existing power meters are very expensive and use a tether connection between device and weights to estimate power. This tether limits the use of this device to a single weight and is not portable. This thesis aims to demonstrate the feasibility of designing and building a weightlifting power meter using inexpensive hardware and software (total design under {dollar}80US). The design in this project uses an accelerometer, Bluetooth and open-source microcontroller for power estimation. The accelerometer gives acceleration information and the microcontroller processes the information and estimates power from the acceleration data. Bluetooth establishes communication between the PC and microcontroller. The overall design was validated based on the accuracy of the accelerometer in estimating distance travelled by device. The power meter using an accelerometer is designed and experimental results are presented.

Comments

Advisors: Donald S. Zinger; Timothy Johnson.||Committee members: Michael Haji-Sheikh; Timothy Johnson; Donald S. Zinger.||Includes bibliographical references.||Includes illustrations.

Extent

v, 41 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

Download

Share

COinS