MPU6050

I while back I did some work on a self-balancing robot using and Arduino Uno and the InvenSense MPU-6050 6DOF sensor. Using the sensor is easy, thanks to Jeff Rowberg’s I2Cdev library and sample code. If you look around line 200 of the MPU6050_DMP6 example arduino sketch that comes with the library you will see the following: // supply your own gyro offsets here, scaled for min sensitivity mpu.setXGyroOffset(220); mpu.setYGyroOffset(76); mpu.setZGyroOffset(-85); mpu.setZAccelOffset(1788); // 1688 factory default for my test chip I did some further reading on the I2CDev forum and found several threads on calibrating the MPU-6050 sensor and determining the optimal offsets. These, apparently, are specific to your device, as well to the exact orientation of the module, once it is installed. I found a significant improvement using the script by Luis Rodenas attached to this forum thread. Below is the Arduino sketch version 1.1 (the most current at the time of this post). For best results, mount your module and run the script, while you have it stable in the position you will use it. For example, on a self balancing robot, have the robot upright in the optimal balanced position and keep it steady while the script completes and you see output with the suggested offsets. You then need to copy these offsets and overwrite the defaults in the sample code (around line 200, as mentioned above). ...

A while back I bought the InvenSense MPU-6050 sensor in a “GY-521” breakout board from eBay. For a long time it sat quietly in my box of “possibly cool things to check in the future”. Recently, I decided to finally get to building a self-balancing robot and dug it out. As with almost anything from eBay, it came with no documentation. The MPU-6050 breakout boards are quite popular in the Arduino community and information was easy to find. Even too easy: it took me a while to sift through many partial, or “almost” working implementations before I found a relatively easy to use, clean and reliable set of instructions and Arduino sample code. So here it is documented for future reference! MPU-6050 Overview According to the InvenSense MPU-6050 datasheet, this chip contains a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer. This makes it a “6 degrees of freedom inertial measurement unit” or 6DOF IMU, for short. Other features include a built in 16-bit analog to digital conversion on each channel and a proprietary Digital Motion Processor™ (DMP) unit. ...