Exercise: MPU6050 IMU I2C Module¶
Objective¶
Communicate digital data between an Arduino and a MPU6050 inertial motion sensor over a I2C bus.
Please be sure to review the general information about I2C and SPI in the previous exercise prior to starting this one.
This exercise will use a MPU6050 I2C Accelerometer/Gyro inertial sensor module from Sparkfun. This modules is based on the InvenSense MPU-6050 Motion Processing Unit. Example Arduino code is available from github as part of the larger i2cdevlib, which provides drivers for many I2C devices.
Steps and observations¶
- Download or find the complete MPU6050_DMP6 sketch. This is an example from i2cdevlib, reorganized into a self-contained sketch. Be sure to fetch all top-level files.
- Plug the IMU module into a breadboard and use solid wire to make the
following five connections from the Arduino to the module. Note
carefully that this module uses 3.3V, unlike the previous example:
- 3.3V -> VCC
- GND -> GND
- A4 -> SDA
- A5 -> SCL
- D2 -> INT
- Attach the Arduino to your computer and install the sketch.
- Open the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor and make sure it is set to 115200 baud.
- Reset the Arduino. You should see a wakeup message on the console
followed by the following prompt:
Send any character to begin DMP programming and demo:
- Type a character in the input box and press enter.
- You should see a rapid series of messages in the following form:
ypr -87.92 74.39 1.85
- Physically rotate the IMU and watch the numbers change.
Comments¶
The sketch is a relatively complex piece of software for a microcontroller, and it uses more than half of the available Arduino Uno program space. But it is also solving a complex example of processing 3D motion data.
For a challenge, clone the original i2cdev library from github and install it in your Arduino IDE libraries path, then try compiling the original unmodified example.
Arduino Code¶
- Documentation: MPU6050_DMP6 Arduino Sketch
- Sketch Folder: MPU6050_DMP6