User manual

AREXX Engineering & JM3 Engineering
Version: 1.03 Nov 1
st
, 2014 page: 5
Introduction
General purpose 3D accelerometer, 3D magnetometer and 3D gyroscope module for robots.
It can be directly plugged into the ASURO expansion port on the ASURO xTend board.
The sensor module is using the LSM9DS0 MEMS. It is a system-in-package featuring a 3D digital
linear acceleration sensor, a 3D digital angular rate sensor, and a 3D digital magnetic sensor.
The system can be configured to generate interrupt signals on dedicated pins and is capable of
motion and magnetic field detection.
Thresholds and timing of interrupt generators are programmable by the user. Magnetic,
accelerometer and gyroscope sensing can be enabled or set in power-down mode separately for
smart power management.
The differences between a gyro and an accelerometer is often not clear - here a clarification:
A gyroscope is very build to detect the rate of an angular rotation, but can’t detect an absolute
angle – but an accelerometer does!
The 3D accelerometer can determine the absolute angle of your robot, e.g. Roll and Pitch value
can be easily calculated by a microcontroller.
In addition you can calculate the vector of a collision impulse. This information can be used to
move around an obstacle.
A magnetometer detects the 3D magnetic earth field. It is very good in finding the magnetic north
pole for heading calculation.