Most accelerometers have a similar range of measurements that they can make: often around 2G – 16G. Similarly, most gyros can measure in the range of 250 degree/s to 2000 degrees/s. That’s enough for many situations, however, there are many situations where it’s not quite enough. When measuring things like a golf swing, soccer ball kick or perhaps a fancy racing car, you need a bit more performance out of your motion sensor.
The ICM20649 from InvenSense is a Wide-Range 6-DoF accelerometer and Gyro, capable of measuring up to ±30g and ±4000 dps! That’s an impressive increase from the norm, about twice the range.
If you’ve found yourself limited by the standard ranges available, or if you just want to make sure the measurement range of your IMU is never an issue, pick up one of our handy ICM20649 breakouts.
Each of our breakouts starts with the sensor of interest, and in this case, we begin with a hot-off-the-reel ICM20649 Wide-Range IMU. These chips are only a few mm across and have 0.4mm pitch contacts. To make it easier for folks to work with this chip, we’ve taken the sensor and mounted it on a breadboard-compatible breakout board.
Along with the sensor, the breakout board includes a voltage regulator and level shifting circuitry to allow you to use it with a range of devices nearly as large as its measurement ranges. Works great with the 3.3V logic level of a Feather or Raspberry Pi, or the 5v level of a Metro 328 or Arduino Uno, this breakout is ready to work with most common microcontrollers or SBCs. and since it speaks I2C, you can easily connect it up with two data wires plus power and ground.
As if that weren’t enough, we’ve also added SparkFun qwiic compatible STEMMA QT connectors for the I2C bus so you don’t even need to solder. Just wire up to your favorite micro with a plug-and-play cable to get 6-DoF data ASAP. For a no-solder experience, just wire up to your favorite micro, like the STM32F405 Feather using a STEMMA QT adapter cable. The Stemma QT connectors also mean the ICM20649 can be used with our various associated accessories
Easy wiring is nice, but even nicer is when it’s combined with drivers and examples that are ready to go. We wrote libraries and examples for Python and Arduino to make easy interfacing of the ICM20649 breakout. Together they’ll get you measuring an astoundingly wide range of measurements in no time!
