MPU-9150 has arrived !!!

Today we have received the MPU-9150. It is unbelievable to see how small can be the chip that integrates an accelerometer, gyro and a magnetometer. During the week end we are going to integrate it with an Arduino and to take a look to the performance.

We want to check carefully the compass capability versus the one (HMC5883L) provided by the magnetometer integrated in most of the available platforms, say: FreeIMU, Mongoose and Razor.
We intend to publish the trade off results and make available the data.

 

Board Integration Choices

Yesterday evening, when preparing the bill of materials for integrating our board (ejtIMU), we noticed that accelerometers, gyros and magnetometers are now available integrated in the same microchip. The question is now what to do. Replacing the current design that envisages the HMC5883L magnetometer and the integrated gyro+acc chip MPU6050 with this unique chip (MPU-9150) including the three sensors?

We took a look to the sensors specs and actually the gyros+acc performances are equivalent among MPU6050 and MPU-9150. Nevertheless the compass informations  provided  the MPU-9150 specs are really poor. So we have decided to acquire the MPU-9150 break out from Sparkfun ( a bit expensive indeed, about 35 euros without VAT !!!) to test the magnetometer performance versus the well-known HMC5883L integrated in the Razor, FreeIMU and Mongoose platforms. We hope  to publish soon the trade off analysis

ejtIMU: First Electrical Beta Desing on stage

First attempts at connection scheme done using Eagle (free license!)

Team has been working hard all over the weekend and the beta design of the ejtIMU is already here.

We already knew something about arduino from its website and by working with Sparkfun's Razor and ckdevices Mongoose (check it on Bildr )

We used Sparkfun's tutorials on Eagle and on schematic design.

 We have also the bill of materials and are going to buy the sensors, microcontroller and FDTI during next week. We are aiming to have the first prototype integrated in 3 weeks time.

Any suggestion is more than welcome. STAY TUNED !!!!   

Brainstorming



Here we are !!! On last Friday afternoon the team met for a nice "call for ideas" on what we would like to do in our projects. Thank you everybody for the enthusiasm

 

Hello World!

We are a group of technology enthusiasts. From experimenting with the integrated low cost measurement platform Mongoose , we became fascinated with low cost sensing technology. Greatly inspired by the Fabio Varesano and his gripping blog on the development of FreeIMU, we decided to venture into the world of open hardware development, particularly in integrating inertial measurement technology.

Our first efforts will likely be directed towards developing prototyping and manufacturing a free integrated navigation platform. We'll be posting our progess here.