Blogs

First prototypes built. Tomorrow testing. Looking simply awesome to me.

I just received the following email. May be a good opportunity to understand something about the MPU6050 and the Invensense motion library. I submitted my registration which is now pending approval from the organizers (WTF? Seriously?).

Btw, see you there, I may record a video of the webinar.

InvenSense Live Webinar: Introducing the world's first MotionApps™ Platform

Dear InvenSense Developers,

We would like to cordially invite you to join our first Webinar on Tuesday, May 17th.

The live webinar introduces the InvenSense Embedded MotionApps™ Platform (Embedded MPL), optimized for Microcontroller based applications that is currently featured on our re-launched Developers Corner. The Webinar will conclude with a collaborative Q&A session with experts from the MotionApps Engineering team to help support your application development.

We will be offering the Webinar at two different time slots. For more information and to register please click on the links below.

Please choose from the following times:

Tuesday May 17th

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM P.D.T
OR
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM P.D.T

Early registration is encouraged, as space is limited.

We hope to see you there!
InvenSense, Inc.

My friend Chris from Germany, just posted this great video of his new VTOL EDF Tricopter powered by FreeIMU and the MultiWii software.

Looking pretty stable! Great work!

UPDATE 2011-05-15:

Here is a better video of the quadcopter.. obviously the camera date is wrong. Nice stable flight!

This is the result of the first experiment trying to solder the MS5611-01BA on my LibreBB-MS5611-01BA. Looks harder than what I was expecting..

I was trying soldering it with hot air during the cooling down of the solder after reflow, obviously trying not to expose the chip to the hot air flow.. obviously a different path has to be followed... more to come on this.

UPDATE:

I did it! Used the pizza oven at 180 deg C using Leaded solder. Tests with Lead Free ROHS compatible solder paste still pending.

Solder joints looks pretty good.

I just love when the postman delivers PCBs! :-)

In the picture below you see FreeIMU v0.3.1, FreeIMU v0.4.1 and LibreBB-MS5611-01BA. Dorkbot PDX group PCB service quality outstanding as usual.

I just received this message from Macnica.eu, one of Invensense EU distributors:

We received an update from InvenSense in regards to the upcoming deliveries of MPU-6000/6050. The situation does not look good since they have completely sold out those parts and currently experience a shortage, which makes them unable to ship any quantities until July timeframe.

InvenSense informed us about the existing situation and unfortunately, due to this fact, we would not be able to deliver these parts on time. Currently, InvenSense noticed that all parts would be delivered in our Munich warehouse around the 2nd week of July'11. Macnica tried to provide any of MPU products from other distributors worldwide, however the situation looks everywhere the same.

Looks like InvenSense sold every MPU60X0 to the Nintendo and Sony guys and left us small hackers without access to them. We will have to wait.

Meanwhile, if you have any news about these sensors and their availability, please leave a comment below! Thanks!

No matter how you carefully check your hand soldered parts and how you test your soldered PCBs for correctness.. shit will happen.

This is a magnified picture of the PCA9306 contained on a FreeIMU v0.3 sent to one of FreeIMU testers.. as you can see the right pin has desoldered from the PCB. Of course, the board have been carefully visually checked and tested by myself before shipping, however, sometimes bad soldering is just undetectable.

I guess this joint disconnected during shipping as the board worked without problems in all my tests before shipping.

I've just got back from four days of relax in Ibiza .. really awesome place but only in low season (May and October looks excellent!)

I'm happy to announce that my libre Arduino Library for the HMC5843 and HMC5883L Honeywell magnetometers is now fully compatible with the HMC5883L. From version 0.2 on both the HMC5843 and HMC5883L will be supported.

By default the library assumes you are using the HMC5883L. In order to use the library with the HMC5883L you have to edit the file HMC58X3.h and uncomment the line "#define ISHMC5843".

The FreeIMU library has been updated to include support for the new HMC58X3 library.

I just published on FreeIMU project page, FreeIMU v0.3.1, a minor revision of FreeIMU v0.3.

FreeIMU v0.3.1 just contains small fixes in the silkscreens, the original silkscreen had 3V3 labels while the actual voltage was 2V7.

I also made the footprint of the HMC5883L slightly bigger to make hand assembly easier.

You find all the Kicad sources and the Gerbers for FreeIMU v0.3.1 in the project page.

Here is a 3D rendering of FreeIMU v0.3.1.