Cheap Inertial measurement unit (IMU)

[hamster_nz]

I've been playing around with an inexpensive (<$10 incl shipping) MPU6050-based IMU, which is a 3-Axis Gyro+ 3-Axis Accelerometer + a Kalman filter which gives Attitude (roll, pitch & yaw).

http://www.dx.com/p/mpu6050-serial-6-axis-accelerometer-gyroscope-module-kalman-filtering-angle-output-for-arduino-414210

As it uses TTL-level serial it was easy to got it running with a Raspberry Pi Zero and an FPGA board, and now just have to find something useful to do with it!

The manual that is linked to with the part is all in Chinese, so I've documented things on my Wiki if anybody else wants to play with one. See http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/MPU6050_sensor &
http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/MPU6050_sensor_RTL

[dannyf]

A far more authoritative source of information is invensense' ducumentation / code on dmp.

[hamster_nz]

A far more authoritative source of information is invensense' ducumentation / code on dmp.

True, but this board has a little bit more on it - it processes the raw Gyro / Accelerometer data to give roll/pitch/yaw, and then reports over RS232, so you can avoid all that yeachy math stuff, making it simple to use with a small controller.

So you don't actually need to talk I2C to the sensor itself, or port the Invensense driver to your controller.

[Mechatrommer]

are you sure it has kalman filter built in? the datasheet only mentioned "low pass filter" signal conditioning... http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/images/b/b1/MPU6050.pdf i have few of them for future rc project...

[hamster_nz]

are you sure it has kalman filter built in? the datasheet only mentioned "low pass filter" signal conditioning... http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/images/b/b1/MPU6050.pdf i have few of them for future rc project...

Definitely - this the decoded serial data :

Code: [Select]

...
1452329359.732404 Acceleration   -1.49   -6.24   -7.65  (   9.98)
1452329359.745713 Rotation       -2.44    0.31   -0.55
1452329359.756980 Attitude      140.84    9.72   90.73
1452329359.776160 Acceleration   -1.51   -6.29   -7.69  (  10.05)
1452329359.789532 Rotation       -2.44    0.37   -0.37
1452329359.800751 Attitude      140.84    9.72   90.73
1452329359.819940 Acceleration   -1.49   -6.26   -7.66  (  10.01)
1452329359.833240 Rotation       -2.44    0.43   -0.49
1452329359.844507 Attitude      140.84    9.72   90.73
...

There looks to be an additional MCU from ST on it, running the filter and interface.

http://www.dx.com/p/mpu6050-serial-6-axis-accelerometer-gyroscope-module-kalman-filtering-angle-output-for-arduino-414210