The MPU-6050 is a popular six DoF accelerometer and gyroscope (gyro) that has all the info you need on how things are shakin' and spinnin' . With six axes of sensing and 16-bit measurements, you'll have everything you need to give your robot friend a sense of balance, using the MPU-6050 as its inner ear.

This combination of gyroscopes and accelerometers is commonly referred to as an Inertial Measurement Unit or IMU. Not so long ago IMUs were the size of a breadbox and cost upwards of $50,000! While you're not going to be using it to guide your mars rocket, the MPU-6050 is several orders of magnitude smaller and a bargain at a price three orders of magnitude less!  Now you can add telemetry to your water rocket (with some waterproofing).

As with all Adafruit breakouts, we've done the work to make the MPU-6050 super easy to use. We've put it on a breakout board with the required support circuitry and connectors to make it easy to work with. And of course we've added SparkFun Qwiic compatible STEMMA QT JST SH connectors that allow you to get going without needing to solder. Just use a STEMMA QT adapter cable, plug it into your favorite micro or Blinka supported SBC and you're ready to rock!

"What is a sensor without a driver?" you might say. To that I would reply "Who cares, we got some for you right here". Be it Arduino, CircuitPython or Python on a computer (single board or even multi-board!), we've got you covered.

This guide was first published on Nov 06, 2019. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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