Eric,
your weighted switch idea sounds promising ... I'll have a look through my catalog and see if I can find an inexpensive tact switch with a low threshold force (the one i'm using now is 260grams, feels like a lot). put a small fishing weight on the button for the switch, and mount it sideways to the PCB. wand swings fast enough one way, g-force pushes the button in, swing the other way, no push.
Torben,
thanks for the suggestion but an accelerometer or other MEMS type device is way outside the budget for this project. Cheapest I could find was an old Analog Devices XL202 for $8 each.
update, here are some pictures to share:
**broken link removed**
this is the pov toy itself, the circuit board is about 2.25" by 1.1". the wires attached are ICSP for the pic chip. The pic is driving a 74hc595 shift register. The button turns the pic on and off via interrupts and low-power sleep mode. there are pads on the pcb for a low-cost SOT23 hall sensor, in case I wanted to place the gizmo in something rotating (like Ada's spoke-pov project)
**broken link removed**