The Berry IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) allows you to measure orientation, velocity and magnetic fields. With this information you can work out which way is up, how fast you’re going, and which way is North. Just think of the possibilities. Add in a Raspberry Pi and you’ve got enough projects to keep you busy till the end of time.
The BerryIMU is a breakout board for the LSM9DS0, a motion sensing IC made by STMicroelectronics. It contains an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer to give you a grand total of 9DOF (Degrees Of Freedom). Whilst the breakout is designed to easily connect to a Raspi, it can also be easily hooked up to a microcontroller because it communicates over SPI or I2C.
IMUs are used in a whole range of applications because it turns out it’s really handy knowing your orientation and how fast you’re going. Some examples are balancing robots, quadcopters, and gesture sensing — there’s even one in your phone so you can play Pokemon Go.
Check out the video below of the BerryIMU hooked up to a Raspberry Pi:
