Optical sensor system for vibration measuring

Telemetry system based on embedded linux single board computer (SBC) is presented. The basis of the system is an optical sensor for measuring amplitude and frequency of structural vibrations. Detection of vibrations and their parameters is possible through observation of the output speckle pattern from the multimode optical fiber. Optical sensor is connected to the embedded SBC, which analyzes the data from the sensor and allows reasonably accurate monitoring of the vibration frequencies and amplitudes on a certain location. As a solution for acquiring the data remotely, it is possible to connect the SBC to a remote location using telecommunication networks (cellular networks, Wlan, etc…)or dedicated networks (ZigBee, radio links, etc…). Components used in this system are cheap and available: CCD array, laser light source, multimode optical fiber and a SBC with Linux operating system. Measurements have been made which show good agreement with actual vibration frequencies, and also good results have been obtained in measuring relative amplitude.