Integrating Gefran Linear Potentiometer PY1 with Beaglebone Black
I hve made dozens of force vs. displacement meausurings, so I will explain in short form: The resoultion of the curve doesn't really matter, what really matters is the shape, so don't make yourself a trouble adding an external ADC for the first time. The Gefran potentiometer is very poor, I have rapleced them everywhere, but OK it's up to you. You have two possibilities:







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab

The other one:







simulate this circuit

You should sample with adc very fast and then implement low pass filter. When force Vs. displacement changes, \$d=\sqrt{v_x+v_y}\$ you store the point in array buffer, since sqrt is time wasting (probably yur MCU can cope with that)is enough to look a threshold difference in both channels.