Low cost XY pressure transducer?

[jgurley]

I want to build an apparatus that holds a small model sailboat and reads out force in two axes. It needs to allow the boat to "heel". The boat weighs less than ten pounds and the forces I need to measure would be less than one pound.

My thought was to build a base with four linear pillow bearings to handle two parallel shafts. Another pillow block would be on each shaft, with a third slide connecting the two shafts (foming an "H"). The connecting shaft would include a clamp to hold the sailboat at the top of the keel in the middle of the "H". The clamp would rotate on the central shaft to allow heeling, while a piezo pressure sensor would detect this shaft's attempts to move "forward" while another piezo sensor would detect the force on the entire "H" "sideways.

The main problem is that this is a pretty hairbrained scheme to help teach a free sailing class, so I want to make at least a first prototype very cheaply. The sensors and electronics are trivial, but all those pillow blocks appear to be awfully expensive (and probably more durable than I need).

Any suggestions for sources of low cost alternatives?

[tusavision]

Nintendo sells them for ~$80.

Named the "balance board"

YouTube- Hacked Nintendo Wii Balance Board Surfing

YouTube- Hacked Nintendo Wii Balance Board Surfing

It's a bluetooth device and I understand there's already a community interfacing them with pcs.

[jgurley]

I'm pretty sure my friend's kids have one. I doubt it will work with the light weights involved with my project, but maybe there's more dynamic range than the video hints at.
Thanks for the suggestion!

[jgurley]

Well, I borrowed a Balance Board, acquired a Bluetooth dongle for my desktop. learned how to use Glovepie, and wrote an AutoIt3 script to produce a realtime force diagram, but all for naught. Although the Balance Board has precision way beyond that necessary for gaming (it appears to resolve a few ounces), it isn't good enough for my application. It would work with a bigger boat or more wind, but neither would be practical.

The obvious next step is to build an equivalent to the Balance Board with lower capacity. Unfortunately, the piezo transducers I can get cheaply come in 1lb and 25lb ranges, and a 5 pound pound boat and four transducers forces me into the 25lb version...