Adafruit Launches High-Precision 9DoF IMU Breakout with Accelerometer, Gyroscope, and Magnetometer

Adafruit has announced the launch of a high-precision nine degrees of freedom (9DoF) inertial measurement unit (IMU), designed for breadboard and STEMMA QT/Qwiic use: the Adafruit LSM6DSOX + LIS3MDL.

"This little breakout contains two chips that sit side-by-side to provide 9 degrees of full-motion data," Adafruit writes of its latest creation. "The board includes an LSM6DSOX, a 6-DoF IMU accelerometer + gyro. The 3-axis accelerometer can tell you which direction is down towards the Earth (by measuring gravity) or how fast the board is accelerating in 3D space. The 3-axis gyroscope can measure spin and twist. This new sensor from ST has very low gyro zero rate and noise, compared to the MPU6050 or even LSM6DS33 so it’s excellent for orientation fusion usage: you’ll get less drift and faster responses.

"It also includes a LIS3MDL 3-axis magnetometer that can sense where the strongest magnetic force is coming from, generally used to detect magnetic north. The three triple-axis sensors add up to 9 degrees of freedom, by combining this data you can orient the board."

The breakout board exposes both chips with 3.3V and 5V logic via level shifters on an I2C bus and interrupt pins. For those looking to use the part in a breadboard design, pins are provided for soldering into headers; the board also includes connectors compatible with the Adafruit STEMMA QT and SparkFun Qwiic I2C bus systems.

"We also wrote libraries to help you get these sensors integrated with your Arduino/C++," Adafruit adds. "This library covers the accel/gyro and this library is for the magnetometer. For advanced Arduino usage, ST has their own fully-featured library that includes extras such as FIFO management and tap detection for the LSM6DSOX and also for the LIS3MDL magnetometer."

The board is now available for just $14.95 on the Adafruit store.