- Posts
- 3,976
- Location
- Near Heathrow.
Yes rotation of the earth from our perspective is a constant vector in space, but it's not acceleration. Acceleration is a change of speed or velocity, which is not happening to the car or us when stationary on the earth ! If the earth was changing speed we would have bigger issues than fixing cars !! It would require quite a large change in the 733mph for us to notice !!A change in speed relative to, which is why the 'standstill' value isn't zero.
Edit: Actually, it's not a 'steady state', the rotational speed does vary, but it's the rotation that's important - it's a (relatively) constant vector acceleration.
Back to the sensors, they need to be able to measure acceleration or deceleration, hence the mid-range starting value. If it were possible to do it with resistors, it'd be a simple Wheatstone bridge array.
Agreed the sensor probably has a non-zero output value when at rest or stationary, but the ECU should normalise this to zero so the numbers make sense !!