Add motion, direction and orientation sensing to your Arduino project with the latest LSM9D breakout board! Inside the chip are three sensors, one is a classic 3-axis accelerometer, which can tell you which direction is down towards the Earth (by measuring gravity) or how fast the board is accelerating in 3D space. The other is a 3-axis magnetometer that can sense where the strongest magnetic force is coming from, generally used to detect magnetic north. The third is a 3-axis gyroscope that can measure spin and twist. By combining this data you can really orient yourself.

Like most IMUs these days, each of the sensors has several levels of sensitivity. The accelerometer has ±2/±4/±8/±16 g ranges, magnetometer has ±4/±8/±12/±16 gauss ranges, and the gyro has ±245/±500/±2000 dps (degrees per second) ranges. Each of these ranges are configured through software.

The breakout board version of this sensor has both I2C and SPI interfaces. Attaching it to the Arduino is simple, power Vin and GND with 3-5VDC, and wire up I2C data on SCL and SDA, and you’re ready to go! More advanced users can use SPI, the Adafruit library has support for both. The breakout comes fully assembled and tested, with some extra header so you can use it on a breadboard. Four mounting holes make for a secure connection.