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In this paper a tilt sensor exploiting the effect of the imposed tilt on a ferrofluid drop free to move inside a glass channel is presented. The proposed inclinometer consists of a 10 mm diameter pipe containing a 0.25 ml of ferrofluid, an actuation coil to control the ferrofluid mass movement and two sensing coils to monitor the mass position. The actuation and the sensing coils are wound around the pipe and the length of the actuation/sensing system is 78 mm. The novelty of this device, as respect to solutions already presented in the literature, consists in the conversion of the device tilt into the time elapsed between transitions of the ferrofluid mass in two fixed positions inside the channel. This time domain readout strategy allows to implement a digital form of the device output which can be intended as the main advantage of the solution proposed.

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Flow sensors are widely used in several application contexts. In this paper a novel sensing approach to implement a low cost flow sensor is presented. The proposed methodology is based on the use of a ferrofluid volume to convert the flow rate into a measurable mass displacement. The ferrofluid movement is detected by an external inductive readout strategy. In this paper, the sensing strategy is illustrated along with a laboratory prototype and experimental results assessing the suitability of the methodology implemented.