I'd like to detect abnormal vibrations on a motor I have. I'm using the following devices: Raspberry PI 5 Adafruit accelerometer ISM330DHCX I've successfully managed to read the sensor at a specific rate (2000Hz) and I'm using it's absolute value (although it's not changing that much): def read_sensor(): global data target_duration = 1 / SAMPLE_RATE # Connect to sensor ... while True: loop_start_time = time.perf_counter() x, y, z = accelerometer.acceleration acceleration = np.sqrt(x**2 + y**2 + z**2) data = np.roll(data, -1) data[-1] = acceleration # Try to get exactly SAMPLE_RATE per second loop_duration = time.perf_counter() - loop_start_time sleep_time = max(0, target_duration - loop_duration) end_time = time.perf_counter() + sleep_time while time.perf_counter() < end_time: pass Then, I use numpy.fft to compute the FFT on the above data and save it to a CSV file: n = len(data) fft = abs(np.fft.fft(data * np.blackman(n)))[:n//2] amplitudes = np.abs(fft) / n # Identify max frequencies max_amplitude = np.max(amplitudes) max_index = np.argmax(amplitudes) frequencies = np.fft.fftfreq(n, d=1/n)[:n//2] # Generate summary result = { 'mean': round(data.mean(), 4), 'std': round(data.std(), 4), 'max': round(data.max(), 4), 'min': round(data.min(), 4), 'range': round(data.max() - data.min(), 4), 'fft_mean': round(np.mean(fft), 4), 'fft_std': round(np.std(fft), 4), 'max_freq': round(frequencies[max_index], 4), 'max_amp': round(max_amplitude, 4), 'speed': duty_cycle } It produces lines like these ones: mean,std,max,min,range,fft_mean,fft_std,max_freq,max_amp,speed 9.9587,0.1261,10.599,9.5467,1.0523,15.6502,308.3268,0.0,4.1798,47 9.9609,0.1287,10.599,9.5467,1.0523,16.2121,308.5345,0.0,4.1826,47 I've attached a propeller to the motor and used a piece of soft plastic to hit the propeller. I known the Nyquist frequency theorem saying that I can only detect frequencies below SAMPLE_RATE/2 Hz. My questions are the following: Why isn't the acceleration changing that much when I add the piece of plastic ? Why is my FFT always showing 0.0 frequency ? Where did I make a mistake in my code ? Continue reading...