teaching machines

Flying with the MPU-6050

January 11, 2018 by . Filed under hardware, mannequino, public.

A student and I are working on a hardware project. This is world I don’t know well, and I think the best thing I can do is painstakingly document our every step. Unfortunately, the project started four months ago. I’m a bit late.

Our first task was to figure out how to talk to an accelerometer. We settled on an MPU-6050, which meant nothing to us but came up in a lot of internet searches. One thing I didn’t quite understand about the electronics market is that one company will fabricate a barebones sensor, and a bunch of others will purchase (or license?) them and integrate them into breakout boards that are easier to tinker with and connect to ad hoc circuits on a breadboard. The core MPU-6050 is made by InvenSense. We bought these packaged on breakout boards from Longruner—because they had five stars on Amazon.

They arrived without headers attached. I needed to solder them in. Let’s not talk about that.

Once the headers were soldered, we were able to insert the sensors into a breadboard and start making connections. Tutorials told me to make these connections from an Arduino to the sensor, and I willingly obeyed:

I’ve only slowly learned what each of the sensor pins does. Here’s my current understanding:

From there we cloned Jeff Rowberg’s I2Cdev library. We copied out Arduino/MPU6050 and Arduino/I2Cdev to our Arduino project’s lib directory, and Arduino/MPU6050/examples/MPU6050_DMP6/MPU6050_DMP6.ino to our project’s src directory. And the accelerometer readings flowed…

But the readings were unstable. There was considerable drift even when the accelerometer was absolutely idle. I stumbled across this script to help calibrate the sensitivities:

// Arduino sketch that returns calibration offsets for MPU6050 //   Version 1.1  (31th January 2014)
// Done by Luis Rodenas <luisrodenaslorda@gmail.com>
// Based on the I2Cdev library and previous work by Jeff Rowberg <jeff@rowberg.net>
// Updates (of the library) should (hopefully) always be available at https://github.com/jrowberg/i2cdevlib

// These offsets were meant to calibrate MPU6050's internal DMP, but can be also useful for reading sensors. 
// The effect of temperature has not been taken into account so I can't promise that it will work if you 
// calibrate indoors and then use it outdoors. Best is to calibrate and use at the same room temperature.

/* ==========  LICENSE  ==================================
 I2Cdev device library code is placed under the MIT license
 Copyright (c) 2011 Jeff Rowberg
 
 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
 in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
 to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
 copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 
 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 
 THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
 OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
 THE SOFTWARE.
 =========================================================
 */

// I2Cdev and MPU6050 must be installed as libraries
#include "I2Cdev.h"
#include "MPU6050.h"
#include "Wire.h"

///////////////////////////////////   CONFIGURATION   /////////////////////////////
//Change this 3 variables if you want to fine tune the skecth to your needs.
int buffersize=1000;     //Amount of readings used to average, make it higher to get more precision but sketch will be slower  (default:1000)
int acel_deadzone=8;     //Acelerometer error allowed, make it lower to get more precision, but sketch may not converge  (default:8)
int giro_deadzone=1;     //Giro error allowed, make it lower to get more precision, but sketch may not converge  (default:1)

// default I2C address is 0x68
// specific I2C addresses may be passed as a parameter here
// AD0 low = 0x68 (default for InvenSense evaluation board)
// AD0 high = 0x69
//MPU6050 accelgyro;
MPU6050 accelgyro(0x68); // <-- use for AD0 high

int16_t ax, ay, az,gx, gy, gz;

int mean_ax,mean_ay,mean_az,mean_gx,mean_gy,mean_gz,state=0;
int ax_offset,ay_offset,az_offset,gx_offset,gy_offset,gz_offset;

///////////////////////////////////   SETUP   ////////////////////////////////////
void setup() {
  // join I2C bus (I2Cdev library doesn't do this automatically)
  Wire.begin();
  // COMMENT NEXT LINE IF YOU ARE USING ARDUINO DUE
  TWBR = 24; // 400kHz I2C clock (200kHz if CPU is 8MHz). Leonardo measured 250kHz.

  // initialize serial communication
  Serial.begin(115200);

  // initialize device
  accelgyro.initialize();

  // wait for ready
  while (Serial.available() && Serial.read()); // empty buffer
  while (!Serial.available()){
    Serial.println(F("Send any character to start sketch.\n"));
    delay(1500);
  }                
  while (Serial.available() && Serial.read()); // empty buffer again

  // start message
  Serial.println("\nMPU6050 Calibration Sketch");
  delay(2000);
  Serial.println("\nYour MPU6050 should be placed in horizontal position, with package letters facing up. \nDon't touch it until you see a finish message.\n");
  delay(3000);
  // verify connection
  Serial.println(accelgyro.testConnection() ? "MPU6050 connection successful" : "MPU6050 connection failed");
  delay(1000);
  // reset offsets
  accelgyro.setXAccelOffset(0);
  accelgyro.setYAccelOffset(0);
  accelgyro.setZAccelOffset(0);
  accelgyro.setXGyroOffset(0);
  accelgyro.setYGyroOffset(0);
  accelgyro.setZGyroOffset(0);
}

///////////////////////////////////   LOOP   ////////////////////////////////////
void loop() {
  if (state==0){
    Serial.println("\nReading sensors for first time...");
    meansensors();
    state++;
    delay(1000);
  }

  if (state==1) {
    Serial.println("\nCalculating offsets...");
    calibration();
    state++;
    delay(1000);
  }

  if (state==2) {
    meansensors();
    Serial.println("\nFINISHED!");
    Serial.print("\nSensor readings with offsets:\t");
    Serial.print(mean_ax); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(mean_ay); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(mean_az); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(mean_gx); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(mean_gy); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.println(mean_gz);
    Serial.print("Your offsets:\t");
    Serial.print(ax_offset); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(ay_offset); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(az_offset); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(gx_offset); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.print(gy_offset); 
    Serial.print("\t");
    Serial.println(gz_offset); 
    Serial.println("\nData is printed as: acelX acelY acelZ giroX giroY giroZ");
    Serial.println("Check that your sensor readings are close to 0 0 16384 0 0 0");
    Serial.println("If calibration was succesful write down your offsets so you can set them in your projects using something similar to mpu.setXAccelOffset(youroffset)");
    while (1);
  }
}

///////////////////////////////////   FUNCTIONS   ////////////////////////////////////
void meansensors(){
  long i=0,buff_ax=0,buff_ay=0,buff_az=0,buff_gx=0,buff_gy=0,buff_gz=0;

  while (i<(buffersize+101)){
    // read raw accel/gyro measurements from device
    accelgyro.getMotion6(&ax, &ay, &az, &gx, &gy, &gz);
    
    if (i>100 && i<=(buffersize+100)){ //First 100 measures are discarded
      buff_ax=buff_ax+ax;
      buff_ay=buff_ay+ay;
      buff_az=buff_az+az;
      buff_gx=buff_gx+gx;
      buff_gy=buff_gy+gy;
      buff_gz=buff_gz+gz;
    }
    if (i==(buffersize+100)){
      mean_ax=buff_ax/buffersize;
      mean_ay=buff_ay/buffersize;
      mean_az=buff_az/buffersize;
      mean_gx=buff_gx/buffersize;
      mean_gy=buff_gy/buffersize;
      mean_gz=buff_gz/buffersize;
    }
    i++;
    delay(2); //Needed so we don't get repeated measures
  }
}

void calibration(){
  ax_offset=-mean_ax/8;
  ay_offset=-mean_ay/8;
  az_offset=(16384-mean_az)/8;

  gx_offset=-mean_gx/4;
  gy_offset=-mean_gy/4;
  gz_offset=-mean_gz/4;
  while (1){
    int ready=0;
    accelgyro.setXAccelOffset(ax_offset);
    accelgyro.setYAccelOffset(ay_offset);
    accelgyro.setZAccelOffset(az_offset);

    accelgyro.setXGyroOffset(gx_offset);
    accelgyro.setYGyroOffset(gy_offset);
    accelgyro.setZGyroOffset(gz_offset);

    meansensors();
    Serial.println("...");

    if (abs(mean_ax)<=acel_deadzone) ready++;
    else ax_offset=ax_offset-mean_ax/acel_deadzone;

    if (abs(mean_ay)<=acel_deadzone) ready++;
    else ay_offset=ay_offset-mean_ay/acel_deadzone;

    if (abs(16384-mean_az)<=acel_deadzone) ready++;
    else az_offset=az_offset+(16384-mean_az)/acel_deadzone;

    if (abs(mean_gx)<=giro_deadzone) ready++;
    else gx_offset=gx_offset-mean_gx/(giro_deadzone+1);

    if (abs(mean_gy)<=giro_deadzone) ready++;
    else gy_offset=gy_offset-mean_gy/(giro_deadzone+1);

    if (abs(mean_gz)<=giro_deadzone) ready++;
    else gz_offset=gz_offset-mean_gz/(giro_deadzone+1);

    if (ready==6) break;
  }
}

The output is six numbers used to normalize the sensor readings. We plugged these numbers into the following lines of the MPU6050_DMP6.ino sketch:

mpu.setXAccelOffset(ax);
mpu.setYAccelOffset(ay);
mpu.setZAccelOffset(az);
mpu.setXGyroOffset(gx);
mpu.setYGyroOffset(gy);
mpu.setZGyroOffset(gz);

The results were much more stable.

With working hardware, it was time to do something interesting. Enter my nine-year-old son. He had a science and technology fair coming up, so I asked him if he wanted to make a little game for which he’d build his own controller. We agreed that it should be a flying game to test the full range of the accelerometer’s motion. He found a donut model and a fork model, and he put it all together in Unity. Here’s the end result:

At the beginning of each level, the system needs a few seconds to settle down. I’m not sure I understand why. Once it settles, we capture the current orientation and invert it. (I helped him with this part.) Each frame, we apply the inverse transformation to cancel out that initial wild aim and realign the fork it to its resting posture.

The fork tracks the accelerometer wonderfully well. I taught my son about low-pass filters, and he implemented one to smooth out some of the jerkiness.

Now it’s time to hook up more than one MPU-6050 in one circuit. Wish us luck!