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SparkFun Photon IMU Shield
This is the SparkFun Photon IMU Shield, a versatile motion-sensing add-on board for your Photon device. Each IMU shield is equipped with an on-board LSM9DS1 system-in-a-chip that houses a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, and 3-axis magnetometer. That's right, 9 degrees of freedom (9DOF) from a single IC!
Each sensor in the LSM9DS1 from STMicroelectronics supports a large variety of ranges: the accelerometer’s scale can be set to ± 2, 4, 6, 8, or 16 g, the gyroscope supports ± 245, 500, and 2000 °/s, and the magnetometer has full-scale ranges of ± 2, 4, 8, or 12 gauss. The SparkFun Photon IMU Shield comes with the headers already soldered on, so you can plug and play!
The Particle Photon is a tiny WiFi development kit for creating connected projects and products. Sporting a 120Mhz ARM Cortex M3 and built-in WiFi, the Photon is not only powerful, but easy to use. The small form factor is ideal for IoT projects with cloud-connectivity.
Note: Not only can this shield operate with the Photon, it can also be used with the Particle Core! We understand that there are a ton of you out there who still haven't been able to get your hands on a Photon yet and would like to start playing with this shield now. If that person is you we hope we have obliged!
- 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
- Headers and Connectors Pre-Soldered
- Compatible with the Photon and the Core
SparkFun Photon IMU Shield Product Help and Resources
Photon Development Guide
August 20, 2015
A guide to the online and offline Particle IDE's to help aid you in your Photon development.
Photon IMU Shield Hookup Guide
July 2, 2015
Learn how to use the SparkFun Photon IMU Shield for your Photon device which houses an on-board LSM9DS1 system-in-a-chip that houses a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, and 3-axis magnetometer.
Core Skill: Programming
If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about communication and code.
Skill Level: Competent - The toolchain for programming is a bit more complex and will examples may not be explicitly provided for you. You will be required to have a fundamental knowledge of programming and be required to provide your own code. You may need to modify existing libraries or code to work with your specific hardware. Sensor and hardware interfaces will be SPI or I2C.
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Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping
If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Competent - You will be required to reference a datasheet or schematic to know how to use a component. Your knowledge of a datasheet will only require basic features like power requirements, pinouts, or communications type. Also, you may need a power supply that?s greater than 12V or more than 1A worth of current.
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Customer Reviews
3.5 out of 5
Based on 2 ratings:
Faulty Hardware
My IMU Shield didn't work and there was little help online on what I could do to diagnose the problem. Trying to get them to ship me a replacement.
Please contact our support team. They will be able to assist in trouble shooting your part. Thanks
Works very well and is reasonably accurate
I have no complaints at all. The device functioned as advertised, and all three that I purchased had no issues. The sample code for I2C comms with the shield was also easy to follow and tweak.
Can I get updates at 1Khz using this IMU board, the photon, and these libraries? Maybe sending data via udp packets with 40 samples (of all 9 axes) a chunk it to make it a reasonable 25 hertz back at a host/logger?
Is anyone getting gyro rates of 1-2 degrees / second when the chip is just lying on a table ? I'm wondering whether a calibration is required.
Is it safe to assume that this uses I2C or SPI for configuration and sensor output? Also, what are the other pin headers that don't have connectors pre-soldered in the image? (DEN, AG, INT2, AG, INT1, M, etc.)