Tiny springs keep Wii, PS3 under control (AP/CNN) {teeny-tiny accelerometers on a chip}

NEW YORK (AP) --
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That's how the unreleased game "Lair" will work on the Sony PlayStation 3, which launched in the U.S. on Friday. Like Nintendo Co.'s Wii console, which went on sale two days later, it uses a motion-sensitive controller in an effort to make games more intuitive to play.
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The technology behind motion-sensing has been around for a while, but recent technical advances have radically brought down the price -- and the size. The new game controllers are the first gadgets that promise to bring the technology into the hands of millions of people, and manufacturers are now using motion sensors in other consumer products, including cell phones.
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When you wave around the new Nintendo controller, two tiny, flat pieces of silicon inside it, each weighing about a millionth of a gram, flex against silicon springs that hold them in place.

The movements are minute, or to put it another way, they're on the scale of 10 to 100 hydrogen atoms stacked side by side.

But these tiny movements can be measured with incredible accuracy. A charge is applied between the moving pieces of silicon and two nearby sensors. Faint fluctuations in that charge, as small as that of 10 electrons, are picked up by a chip that translates it into an understanding of how the controller is moving.


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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/11/20/console.controller.ap/index.html