The world’s first unicorn-friendly 9-axis motion tracking device.
The MPU-9150™ is the world’s first 9-axis motion tracking device designed for the low power, low cost, and high performance requirements of consumer electronics equipment including smartphones, tablets and wearable sensors.
The MPU-9150™ is actually two chips in one package: the MPU-6050 ( 3-axis gyro / 3-axis accelerometer ), and an AK8975 ( 3-axis digital compass ). They’ve also included what they call a Digital Motion Processor™ (DMP™) which is used to precisely process and ship sensor data over I2C.
It’s pretty small- 4x4x1mm with a 2.4 to 3.34V operating range. So… probably not something you can hook-up directly to a microcontroller. No big.
Here are a few items from the feature list* that caught our eye:
Drift-b-gone™
Reduced settling effects and sensor drift by elimination of board-level cross-axis alignment errors between accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass.
Spatial-smackdown™
Digital input on FSYNC pin to support video electronic image stabilization and GPS.
Unicorn-o-topia™
Programmable interrupt supports gesture recognition, panning, zooming, scrolling, free fall interrupt, high-G interrupt, zero-motion detection, tap detection, and shake detection.
Temp-o-matic™
Digital-output temperature sensor ( compensation for temperature variance is critical ).
Plus, it’s highly configurable…
For precision tracking of both fast and slow motions, the parts feature a user-programmable gyro full-scale range of ±250, ±500, ±1000, and ±2000°/sec (dps), a user-programmable accelerometer full-scale range of ±2g, ±4g, ±8g, and ±16g, and compass with a full scale range of ±1200µT.
If you’re interested in a datasheet, there isn’t one for the IC yet. They do have some documentation for their demo board – which is loaded full of goodies and powered by an MSP430 MCU from TI.
We’re still trying to dig up some information on pricing. As soon as we get the infos, wel’ll let you know. Seriously though, if they can beat the ADXL345 accelerometer and ITG-3200 gyro breakout from Sparkfun by a couple bucks – it will be well worth the wait. Availability is currently listed as Q2 2012.
* – Humorous trademarks added for affect.
