“I had always wanted a device that would help me in leveling my 3D printer bed and some other device that would help me get an approximate length of a curved surface so that I could easily cut out the right length of sticker to apply on that surface and thus preventing wastage. So I thought why not combine both ideas and make a single gadget that can do both. At last, I ended up building a device that can not only measure curved lines and surface levelness but can also measure straight line distances and angle of a line. So basically this gadget works as an all in one digital level+ruler+protractor+roll-measure. The device is tiny enough to fit inside a pocket and its batteries can be easily recharged using a phone charger.
This device uses an accelerometer and gyroscope sensor to accurately measure surface levelness and angle, a sharp IR sensor to measure the linear length in a non-contact way and an encoder with a wheel which can be rolled over a curved surface or a curved line to get its length.
Navigation through the device modes and features is done using touch buttons marked as M (mode), U (unit) and 0 (zero)
M - To choose between different types of measurements
U - To choose between the units mm, cm, inches, and meter
0 - To reset the measured values to 0 after measuring a distance or angle.
The reason for using touch buttons is to gently navigate through the modes and units without disturbing the position of the device while measuring.
The device has a neodymium magnet embedded into its base so that it won’t slip or slide off the metal surface being measured.
The casing is designed to make the device as compact as possible and also to be 3D printed easily.”