MPU6050 Gyroscope/Accelerometer Sensor

MPU6050 is intended towards low cost, low power and high performance demanding wearables, smartphones and tablets. It combines a MEMS 3 axis accelerometer and 3 axis gyroscope sensor on the same silicon die to measure acceleration, orientation, velocity, displacement or any other motion-related parameter. It also includes a Digital Motion Processor to take the processing load away from the microcontroller thus increasing the accuracy and computational power. This IMU6050 sensor also has auxiliary I2C pins which when connected to other sensors like 3 axis Magnetometer will give complete 9 axis Motion Data output. It is very easy to interface with popular Microcontrollers like Arduino and Raspberry Pi. It can be used to control Self Balancing Robots, RC cars, Drones, Quadcopters, Unmanned Vehicles etc. The sensor is also refered by its part number GY521 Sensor. 

Specifications of MPU6050:

• MEMS 3-aixs accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope values combined
• Power Supply: 3-5V
• Communication : I2C protocol
• Built-in 16-bit ADC provides high accuracy
• Built-in DMP provides high computational power
• Can be used to interface with other IIC devices like magnetometer
• Configurable IIC Address
• In-built Temperature sensor

Product Description

To connect it to a microcontroller like Arduino, power the device from the VCC and GND pins and make sure you make the correct I2C connections i.e. A4 for SDA and A5 for SCL. If you are not using any additional sensors like magnetometer, there is no need to connect XDA and XCL.  INT pin is used to indicate that the FIFO buffer present is full of data. If you are using more than one MPU6050 gyroscope sensor, connect using the AD0 pin.

Additional Resources:

1. Datasheet
2. Arduino Library
3. Arduino Project