When you watch any video on your smartphone, most of the time you change the direction of your phone. So, when you change the direction, the phone automatically changes from portrait to landscape mode. This results because of the accelerometer sensor in your phone. Similarly, when you play games on your mobile phones, in some games the GPS helps you to navigate. That is because of the gyroscope sensor present in smartphones. And for the tracking purpose, the phone uses a magnetometer. Thus, this all gets possible because these smart user interface devices use a sensor like LSM9DS0
An Overview of LSM9DS0 Sensor
The LSM9DS0 is one of the beneficial sensors that can measure three major properties of movement angular acceleration, velocity, and heading. With the help of these three properties, one can get a lot of knowledge about the movement of objects. Hence the sensor contains three elements, the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer. Since the sensor measures every movement property in three dimensions, therefore it generates nine pieces of data: acceleration in x, y and, z-direction, angular rotation in, y and, z-direction, and magnetic force in x, y, and z-axis.
How Accelerometer Works?
By measuring the gravity, the accelerometer comprehends which direction is down towards the Earth or how speedily the board is speeding up in three-dimensional space. The accelerometer measures the vibration of any object. Practically, the vibrations of any object cause the piezoelectric effect. Thus, the piezoresistive and piezo capacitive elements in the converts these mechanical motion into an electrical signal. An accelerometer converts mechanical energy into electrical energy.
How Gyroscope Works?
The gyroscope controls the twist and space A gyroscope is used to measure the rotation of any particular axis. It comprises the drive arm which is attached to the sensing element. The arm creates the motion in the sensing element which produces the angular velocity. It then converted this angular velocity into electrical signals. Hence gyroscope detects and estimates the motion of the objects.
How Magnetometer Works?
A magnetometer estimates the magnetic field, particularly regarding its magnetic orientation and strength. It senses where the richest magnetic force is coming from, used to catch magnetic north.
Features of LSM9DS0 Sensor
- 3 acceleration channels, 3 angular rate
- channels, 3 magnetic field channels
- ±2/±4/±6/±8/±16 g linear acceleration full scale
- ±2/±4/±8/±12 gauss magnetic full scale
- ±245/±500/±2000 dps angular rate full scale
- 16-bit data output
- SPI / I2C serial interfaces
- Analog supply voltage 2.4 V to 3.6 V
- Power-down mode / low-power mode
- Programmable interrupt generators
- Embedded self-test
- Built in temperature sensor
- Embedded FIFO
- Position and motion detection functions
- Click/double-click recognition
- Intelligent power saving for handheld devices
- ECOPACK®, RoHS and “Green” complian
Pinout LSM9DS0
Pin Configuration
| Pin Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Vin | The chip operates on 3 VDC, has a built-in voltage regulator on board that will take 3to 5V DC and converts it down. |
| 3V3 | This is the 3.3V output from the voltage regulator. |
| GND | common ground. |
| SCL | It’s an I2C clock pin that you connect to your microcontroller’s I2C clock line. There is also a 10K pullup on this pin. |
| SDA | It’s an I2C data pin that you can connect to your microcontroller’s I2C data line. It also has a 10K pullup on this pin. |
| SCL | This is an SPI clock Pin. |
| SDA | It’s an SPI MOSI pin. |
| CSG | The Gyro sub-chip Chip Select. |
| CSXM | Accelerometer and Magnetometer sub-chip Select pin. |
| SDOG | Gyro sub-chip MISO pin. |
| SDOXM | Accelerometer and Magnetometer sub-chip MISO pin. |
| DEN | For dynamically enable/disable Gyro. |
| INT1, INT2 | These are interrupts from the accelerometer or magnetometer sub-chip. |
| DRDY | Gyro sub-chip data ready output. |
| INTG: | Interrupt from the Gyro sub-chip |
Applications of Adafruit LSM9DS0
With these three components that are present in this sensor, it is workable to do positioning and different types of movement analyses.
Smart User Interface
The sensor has a greater capability to create a smart user interface. And, therefore, used in smartphones. The accelerometer determines changes in the displacement, tilt, and orientation of smartphones around three axes by estimating the acceleration forces. While The gyroscope controls how fast the smartphone device rotates along the three axes.
Virtual reality Devices
The sensor has now been fundamental for the evolution of modern virtual reality devices. Because it favors us to measure the motion and direction in space. The thing which is significant to know when translating movement to the virtual reality world. Thus, this sensor can work for gaming devices too.
