It’s here: Dexter Industries 6-DOF IMU

Dexter Industries have started selling their new Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that has both a gyroscope and an accelerometer.

Gyroscope

The gyro has 3 ranges, 250, 500 and 2000 degrees per second with 1/128, 1/64 and 1/16 degree accuracy respectively.  It can measure the rate of turn on all three axes.  The gyro also has a temperature sensor that is currently not supported by my driver suite (I’ll have to work on that).  The built-in filter allows you to clean up the signal a bit before requesting it with your NXT.

Accelerometer

The other main sensor in the IMU is the 3-axes accelerometer which also sports 3 ranges, 2, 4 and 8G in both 8 and 10 bit resolutions. If speed is more important than accuracy, you can choose to use to use 8 bit resolution which requires only half the amount of data to be requested from the sensor.

Creating a balance

Matthew Richardson and Laurens Valk both made a Segway using the new Dexter Industries IMU.  Matt’s is done in NXC and Laurens’ one with ROBOTC (using my driver, w00t).  Naturally, I claim full credit for Laurens’ one.  In my defense, I was in the same room when Laurens initially programmed it.

I want one, where can I buy it?

The IMU can be purchased right here: [LINK].