Best setup and pinout for 6-DOF IMU

Hi all,

I am designing a small 6-DOF IMU with digital outputs that uses the newest MEMs devices on the market (some of which haven't been released yet) to keep the footprint small and the cost low. I'm hoping to make a bunch of them and sell them at low margins so that DIY'ers like us can afford to tinker without breaking the bank. If they sell well enough, I'll be able to keep the cost on the order of $100 for the full 6-DOF with digital outputs. :-)

If you had the choice, what do you all think the "best" pinout would be?

My current design has two .1" headers mounted on opposite ends of the board, so that prototyping and mounting is easy.

Alternatively, I could add mounting holes, and then put little shrouded headers that you'd plug into; then, you wouldn't have to mount the IMU on a PCB - you could put it anywhere on the airframe.

Another option would be to use low-profile board-to-board connectors, but they wouldn't be easy to use (have really fine pitch).

What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by Caleb Chamberlain on October 31, 2009 at 5:36pm
I'd recommend the STM32. It is a fantastic MCU.

The Arm Cortex core has a built-in bootloader. By pulling the boot pin high and cycling power, the MCU automatically boots into a hardware program that accepts commands over the serial port. Most of those commands interact with the program memory (FLASH). There is PC software available that downloads .hex files onto the device.

You can also program the STM32 using JTAG. I personally didn't use JTAG, because there wasn't enough space on the board to route all the pins out. The company "Raisonance" offers HW debuggers that allow you to step through the code. http://www.raisonance.com/
Permalink Reply by tejeshwi on May 21, 2010 at 8:19am
Hi Mike,

I am Tejeshwi from India. I have just completed my B.Tech in mechanical engineering at IIT Delhi. Currently, i am working on a project at LEC, ETH Zurich. The objective of the project is to simulate a Funjet which works with an electric pusher-prop engine. I am using JSBSim to simulate the flight dynamics. Now, since electric engine engine.xml files do not come as a template when you download JSBSim, i was wondering how to author this file. As i see from your posts, you seem to have tried your hands at it, i am sure, you must have had some experiences with the electric engine.xml file. could you kindly share your experience and enlighten me a bit on authoring the engine file for an electric engine? You can reach me at tejeshwi007@gmail.com. I hope you shall oblige me by doing the necessary.

Cheers,
tejeshwi

Cheers,
Tejeshwi

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