FreeIMU: an Open Hardware Framework for Orientation and Motion Sensing

FreeIMU is an ongoing research project which aims to design Open Hardware 9/10 DOM/DOF Inertial Measurement Units as well as easy to use Orientation and Motion Sensing libraries, built on top of the Arduino platform.
The goal of the FreeIMU Framework is to simplify the development of projects based upon the most powerful and new consumer grade inertial, magnetic and pressure sensors.

The main application of FreeIMU is orientation sensing: by reading the data from the various sensors is possible to compute precisely the orientation of FreeIMU in the space. Recent boards also feature an high resolution barometer allowing to precisely track the device altitude. This can be useful in many applications: human-computer interaction device prototyping, flying machines, robots, human movement tracking and everywhere orientation sensing is a key aspect.

As FreeIMU breakout the sensors interrupt pins, it’s also possible to detect per axis single and double taps, free fall as well as activity or inactivity. This makes FreeIMU a very good choice for Human-Computer devices prototyping. Interrupts pins are also very useful if you are into interrupt based reading of the sensors, useful to develop high frequency interrupt based sensor reading.

A true Open Hardware project

FreeIMU is a true Open hardware, released under the CC-BY-SA. You are free, actually encouraged, to use it for any purpose, to study and modify its designs, to make your own copies of FreeIMU and even sell your own FreeIMU based hardware. But, you will have to share your designs based on FreeIMU keeping attribution and sharing them using the same libre license.

On FreeIMU repository (see development section below) and from the downloads on this page, you have access to everything you need to build your own FreeIMU board. You have access to the schematics, the PCB designs and even the bill of material so that you can build your own FreeIMU.

Moreover, FreeIMU has been designed using KiCAD, an excellent libre PCB design software, so you don’t have to rely on proprietary software to study or modify FreeIMU.

Getting FreeIMU

An assembled, tested and ready to use FreeIMU board can be bought from:

• Viacopter.eu
  • FreeIMU v0.4 (available!)
• SDModel.it
  • FreeIMU v0.4 (available!)
• Flyduino.net
  • FreeIMU v0.4 (sold out)

The FreeIMUs boards bought from the above shops financially support the project. The boards have been produced and assembled in Italy by reasonably paid workers in a safe environment in respect with European and Italian laws.

Build your own FreeIMU

If you have SMD soldering experience (or if you are up for experimentation) you can build your own FreeIMU. From the downloads below you have access to all the designs needed to have your FreeIMU PCB manufactured.

You can get cheap PCB with awesome quality from Dorkbot PDX and order the various components needed from you favorite electronic distributor: the Bill of Materials (BOM) files will tell you exactly which components you’ll need for your FreeIMU.

The are various ways of soldering the board. If you only need a couple of boards done, tack flux, solder wire and hot air reflow station are enough to build your boards (Remember not to use hot air over the pressure sensor). See this video for good instructions. In case you are building more units, an SMD stencil with solder paste is the suggested method.

In case you need help, just post a comment below.

FreeIMU versions

FreeIMU library

FreeIMU can be easily used on Arduino compatible boards using the Arduino FreeIMU library which implements sensor fusion MARG orientation filter enabling you to do easy and straightforward orientation sensing.FreeIMU library – 2012/11/22Use Arduino 1.0.1 IDE or later version.

Install the libraries as explained in the Arduino Libraries Reference section Contributed Libraries.
The FreeIMU library now supports all the versions up to v0.4. By default it’s configured to be used on v0.4. In order to use on different boards, open the file FreeIMU.h and uncomment the correct version of your board.

The FreeIMU library also supports the following 3rd parties boards:

• Sparkfun IMU Digital Combo Board – 6 Degrees of Freedom ITG3200/ADXL345 SEN-10121
• Sparkfun 9 Degrees of Freedom – Razor IMU SEN-10736
• Sparkfun 9 Degrees of Freedom – Sensor Stick SEN-10724
• Sparkfun 9 Degrees of Freedom – Sensor Stick SEN-10183
• DIYDrones ArduIMU+ V3
• Generic MPU6050 Breakout boards (eg: GY-521, SEN-11028 and other MPU6050 wich have the MPU6050 AD0 pin connected to GND.)

Note for FreeIMU v0.1 and 0.2 users: from April 2011 the default magnetometer configuration is for HMC5883L. In order to use the library with HMC5843 (v0.1 and v0.2) edit the file HMC58X3.h and uncomment the line #define ISHMC5843.
FreeIMU Processing ProgramsThe FreeIMU library comes with Processing visualization demos. In order to use them, Download and install Processing. Copy the folders within the processing folder of the FreeIMU library archive into your Processing sketchbook.Remember to change the Serial port address in the Processing code to match the address used by arduino on your system.

Ports to Other platforms

FreeIMU library on PIC 24 microcontroller by Hari Nair [email protected]. Author notes: 1. assumes a 6MHz crystal is attached and x4PLL internally, so Fosc = (6×4)/2 = 12 Mhz 2. trivial to use the internal FRC oscillator, instead of FNOSC_PRIPLL in the configuration words, use FNOSC_FRCPLL. This will give you Fosc = (8×4)/2 = 16MHz, but of course with less precision. 3. transmits ascii quaternion data at 38400baud. This does slow down the sampling rate. Without the quaternion print, the code completes in less than 10mS, so the sampling rate is exactly 100Hz as set by the timer.

FreeIMU library on NXP LPC1343 Cortex m3 processor by Hari Nair [email protected]. More details and possibility to contact the author on the FreeIMU community development forum.

Have you ported the FreeIMU library to other platforms? Please let me know and I’ll list your work here!

Calibration

A calibration GUI application is available. The software is currently in alpha state, however many people are already using it.

The calibration, when properly executed, drastically improve the orientation sensing performance of the FreeIMU framework. If you are experiencing drifting or inconsistent results, your sensors may need to be calibrated using the Calibration GUI.

Community

There is now a FreeIMU Community website, which has been set up to become the central point of interaction between users of the FreeIMU framework. This is the place where you can get help, join others in developing new features, discuss IMUs applications and much more.

Previously we used FreeIMU answers on Launchpad as well as comments on Fabio’s website for supporting users, however we decided to create an ad-hoc website to facilitate information gathering and collaboration between people.

Development, Bug Reports and Suggestions

Development of FreeIMU boards and libraries can be followed on FreeIMU project page on Launchpad which also hosts our software and hardware repository.

Suggestions or bug reports can be made on the FreeIMU Community, in the development forum.Previously bug reports were posted on the Launchpad bug reporting interface but that’s not used anymore.

FreeIMU repository holds all the various library sources as well as design files and schematics. Everything is revisioned meaning that all the changes are logged and annotated.

The contents of the repository are available using Bazaar (bzr) with the command:
bzr co lp:freeimu

Never used bzr before? Not a big deal, it’s very similar to git, svn or others. You may wanna have a look at the cheatsheet to have an overview of the commands available or read more documentation on bzr.

Alternatively, in case you have problems setting up bzr on your system, you can simply get the latest repository contents from here. The resulting file is a .tar.gz archive which can be opened with the excellent 7zip under Windows. Mac and Linux users shouldn’t have problems opening such files.

The files on the repository can also browsed from a browser here. A list of recent changes is available here.

FreeIMU users videos

Here some videos made by FreeIMU users on their projects using FreeIMU.

rtsdrums flies like crazy with FreeIMU on his quadcopter.. check out the triple flip!

Chris uses FreeIMU on his VTOL EDF Tricopter powered by the MultiWii software.