Motion Sensor Setup:
Please note: the motion sensors can be a little bit
finicky, so please be patient with them; in some cases we might have to fiddle
around with them a little.
Setup:
Take the sonic ranger (motion detector) out of the plastic storage box on
your lab station, and plug it into the input of the LabPro interface
attached to your PC. You need to put a flat object (flag) on the cart that
the motion detector is going to detect, facing the detector, which should be
mounted above the airtrack.
The minimum range that the motion detector can measure is about 0.3 m, so you will
always want to be at least that far away. The maximum range is supposed to
be 6 m, but is not the case with all of them.
- Start LoggerPro, the interface software (Start - Academic -
Physics - Vernier - Logger Pro). It should automatically detect the motion
sensor, and setup tables and graphs for the kinematic variables.
- You may need to find the motion sensor setup in order to change the length
of time for which it takes data.
- Start the cart in motion, and then click the Collect button.
- Either wait for time to run out, or hit the stop button when you are done
taking data.
- Be sure to save the LoggerPro file, or copy the data to another program
(Excel, Origin, etc.) every time unless you are sure you want
to get rid of the data. Make sure if you are copying the data, that the
correct data has copied (compare the LoggerPro data with the data that you have
copied).