The LSM9DS1 is a versatile, motion-sensing system-in-a-chip. It houses a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, and 3-axis magnetometer – nine degrees of freedom (9DOF) in a single IC! The LSM9DS1 is equipped with a digital interface, but even that is flexible: it supports both I2C and SPI, so you’ll be hard-pressed to find a microcontroller it doesn’t work with. This IMU-in-a-chip is so cool we put it on the quarter-sized breakout board you are currently viewing!

The LSM9DS1 is one of only a handful of IC’s that can measure three key properties of movement – angular velocity, acceleration, and heading – in a single IC. By measuring these three properties, you can gain a great deal of knowledge about an object’s movement and orientation. The LSM9DS1 measures each of these movement properties in three dimensions. That means it produces nine pieces of data: acceleration in x/y/z, angular rotation in x/y/z, and magnetic force in x/y/z. The LSM9DS1 Breakout has labels indicating the accelerometer and gyroscope axis orientations, which share a right-hand rule relationship with each other.

Each sensor in the LSM9DS1 supports a wide spectrum of ranges: the accelerometer’s scale can be set to ± 2, 4, 8, or 16 g, the gyroscope supports ± 245, 500, and 2000 °/s, and the magnetometer has full-scale ranges of ± 4, 8, 12, or 16 gauss.

Get Started with the LSM9DS1 Breakout Guide

Features

3 acceleration channels, 3 angular rate channels, 3 magnetic field channels

±2/±4/±8/±16 g linear acceleration full scale

±4/±8/±12/±16 gauss magnetic full scale

±245/±500/±2000 dps angular rate full scale

SPI / I2C serial interfaces

Operating Voltage: 3.3V

This tiny logic level shifter features four bi-directional channels, allowing for safe and easy communication between devices operating at different logic levels. It can convert signals as low as 1.5 V to as high as 18 V and vice versa, and its four channels are enough to support most common bidirectional and unidirectional digital interfaces, including I²C, SPI, and asynchronous TTL serial.

As digital devices get smaller and faster, once ubiquitous 5 V logic has given way to ever lower-voltage standards like 3.3 V, 2.5 V, and even 1.8 V, leading to an ecosystem of components that need a little help talking to each other. For example, a 5 V part might fail to read a 3.3 V signal as high, and a 3.3 V part might be damaged by a 5 V signal. This level shifter solves these problems by offering bidirectional voltage translation of up to four independent signals, converting between logic levels as low as 1.5 V on the lower-voltage side and as high as 18 V on the higher-voltage side, and its compact size and breadboard-compatible pin spacing make it easy to integrate into projects.

The logic high levels on each side of the shifter are achieved by 10 kΩ pull-up resistors to their respective supplies; these provide quick enough rise times to allow decent conversion of fast mode (400 kHz) I²C signals or other similarly fast digital interfaces (e.g. SPI or asynchronous TTL serial). External pull-ups can be added to speed up the rise time further at the expense of higher current draw. See the schematic diagram below for more information.

Dual-supply bus translation:

Lower-voltage (LV) supply can be 1.5 V to 7 V

Higher-voltage (HV) supply can be LV to 18 V

Lower-voltage (LV) supply can be 1.5 V to 7 V

Higher-voltage (HV) supply can be LV to 18 V

Four bidirectional channels

Small size: 0.4″ × 0.5″ × 0.08″ (13 mm × 10 mm × 2 mm)

Breadboard-compatible pin spacing

Example wiring diagram for connecting 5 V and 3.3 V devices through the 4-channel bidirectional logic level shifter.

This logic level converter requires two supply voltages: the lower-voltage logic supply (1.5 V to 7 V) connects to the LV pin and the higher-voltage supply (LV to 18 V) connects to the HV pin. The HV supply must be higher than the LV supply for proper operation. Logic low voltages will pass directly from Hx to the corresponding Lx (and vice versa), while logic high voltages will be converted between the HV level to the LV level as the signal passes from Hx to Lx or Lx to Hx.

The level shifter circuit does not require a ground connection to either device, so there are no ground pins on the board. (Some competing level shifter modules provide ground connections that simply act as a pass-through; we have opted to leave these off and make the board smaller.) The two devices being connected through the level shifter must still share a common ground.

The picture below shows a level-shifted TTL serial connection (RX and TX) between a 5 V Arduino Uno and a 3.3 V Raspberry Pi.

Using the 4-channel bidirectional logic level shifter to create a serial connection between a 5 V Arduino Uno and a 3.3 V Raspberry Pi.

A 0.1″-pitch male header strip is included for use with this board. The strip can be broken into smaller pieces and soldered in so the board can be used with perfboards, breadboards, or 0.1″ female connectors. Alternatively, wires can be soldered directly to the board for more compact installations. The connections are labeled on the back side of the of the PCB, so you might find it more convenient to solder the pins in the way that allows the labeled side to be facing up.

Schematic diagram

The logic level conversion is accomplished with a simple circuit consisting of a single n-channel MOSFET and a pair of 10 kΩ pull-up resistors for each channel. When Lx is driven low, the MOSFET turns on and the zero passes through to Hx. When Hx is driven low, Lx is also driven low through the MOSFET’s body diode, at which point the MOSFET turns on. In all other cases, both Lx and Hx are pulled high to their respective logic supply voltages. External pull-ups can be added to speed up the rise time. This same circuit is detailed in NXP’s application note on I²C bus level-shifting techniques, and we have used it before on carrier boards for 3.3 V sensors with I²C interfaces – like the MinIMU-9 – to enable them to work directly with both 3.3 V and 5 V systems.

This schematic is also available as a downloadable PDF (135k pdf).

People often buy this product together with:

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flash cards and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V.We do have some other handy level shifters in the shop, from the DIP 74LVC245 to the fancy bi-directional TXB0108. However, neither of these are happy to work with I2C, which uses a funky pull-up system to transfer data back and forth. This level shifter board combines the ease-of-use of the bi-directional TXB0108 with an I2C-compatible FET design following NXP's app note.This breakout has 4 BSS138 FETs with 10K pullups. It works down to 1.8V on the low side, and up to 10V on the high side. The 10K's do make the interface a little more sluggish than using a TXB0108 or 74LVC245 so we suggest checking those out if you need high-speed transfer.While we designed it for use with I2C, this works as well for  TTL Serial,  slow <2MHz SPI, and any other digital interface both uni-directional and bidirectional. Comes with a fully assembled, and tested PCB with 4 full bidirectional converter lines as well as 2 pieces of 6-pin header you can solder on to plug into a breadboard or perfboard.

Would you like to add powerful and easy-to-use Bluetooth Low Energy to your robot, art or other electronics project? Heck yeah! With BLE now included in modern smart phones and tablets, its fun to add wireless connectivity. So what you really need is the new Adafruit Bluefruit LE SPI Friend!

The Bluefruit LE SPI Friend makes it easy to add Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity to anything with 4 or 5 GPIO pins. With SPI, you don't have to worry about baud rates, flow control, or giving up a hardware UART port. Connect to your Arduino or other microcontroller using the common four-pin SPI interface (MISO, MOSI, SCK and CS) plus a 5th GPIO pin for interrupts (to let the Arduino know when data or a response is ready).

This multi-function module can do quite a lot! For most people, they'll be very happy to use the standard Nordic UART RX/TX connection profile. In this profile, the Bluefruit acts as a data pipe, that can 'transparently' transmit back and forth from your iOS or Android device. You can use our iOS App or Android App, or write your own to communicate with the UART service.

If you like Serial communication more than SPI, we also have a version that can talk UART

The board is capable of much more than just sending strings over the air!  Thanks to an easy to learn AT command set, you have full control over how the device behaves, including the ability to define and manipulate your own GATT Services and Characteristics, or change the way that the device advertises itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see. You can also use the AT commands  to query the die temperature, check the battery voltage, and more, check the connection RSSI or MAC address, and tons more. Really, way too long to list here!

Download our free Android/iOS app and you're ready to rock!

Using our Bluefruit iOS App or Android App, you can quickly get your project prototyped by using your iOS or Android phone/tablet as a controller. We have a color picker, quaternion/accelerometer/gyro/magnetometer or location (GPS), and an 8-button control game pad.

You can do a lot more too!

The Bluefruit can also act like an HID Keyboard (for devices that support BLE HID)

Can become a BLE Heart Rate Monitor (a standard profile for BLE) - you just need to add the pulse-detection circuitry

Turn it into a UriBeacon, the Google standard for Bluetooth LE beacons. Just power it and the 'Friend will bleep out a URL to any nearby devices with the UriBeacon app installed.

Built in over-the-air bootloading capability so we can keep you updated with the hottest new firmware. Use any Android or iOS device to get updates and install them!

Why use Adafruit's Module?

There are plenty of BLE modules out there, with varying quality on the HW design as well as the firmware. So why should you go with this one?

One of the biggest advantages of the Adafruit Bluefruit LE family is that we wrote all of the firmware running on the devices ourselves from scratch. We control every line of code that runs on our modules ... and so we aren't at the mercy of any third party vendors who may or may not be interested in keeping their code up to date or catering to our customer's needs.

Because we control everything about the product, we add features that are important to our customers, can solve any issues that do come up without begging any 3rd parties, and we can even change Bluetooth SoCs entirely if the need ever arises!

Check out our tutorial for all of the details that you can dream of!

Bosch has stepped up their game with their new BMP280 sensor, an environmental sensor with temperature, barometric pressure that is the next generation upgrade to the BMP085/BMP180/BMP183. This sensor is great for all sorts of weather sensing and can even be used in both I2C and SPI!

This precision sensor from Bosch is the best low-cost, precision sensing solution for measuring barometric pressure with ±1 hPa absolute accuraccy, and temperature with ±1.0°C accuracy. Because pressure changes with altitude, and the pressure measurements are so good, you can also use it as an altimeter with  ±1 meter accuracy.

The BMP280 is the next-generation of sensors from Bosch, and is the upgrade to the BMP085/BMP180/BMP183 - with a low altitude noise of 0.25m and the same fast conversion time. It has the same specifications, but can use either I2C orSPI. For simple easy wiring, go with I2C. If you want to connect a bunch of sensors without worrying about I2C address collisions, go with SPI.

Nice sensor right? So we made it easy for you to get right into your next project. The surface-mount sensor is soldered onto a PCB and comes with a 3.3V regulator and level shifting so you can use it with a 3V or 5V logic microcontroller without worry. We even wrote up a nice tutorial with wiring diagrams, schematics, libraries and examples to get you running in 10 minutes!

And make sure to check the tutorial for example code for Arduino and CircuitPython, pinouts, assembly, wiring, downloads, and more!

This compact board breaks out the pins of a microSD card connector necessary to interface with the card through SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), and it can be directly integrated into 5 V systems thanks to its on board 3.3 V regulator and level shifting circuits. The 0.1″ pin spacing allows compatibility with standard perfboards, solderless breadboards, and 0.1" connectors.

This carrier board makes it easy to interface a microSD memory card (originally known as TransFlash) with an SPI-capable microcontroller, offering a convenient and inexpensive way to add gigabytes of non-volatile storage to an embedded project. It includes a 3.3 V regulator and level shifters on the four SPI lines, enabling direct integration into 5 V systems, and it provides access to the all of the connections through single 1×9 row of 0.1″-spaced through-holes. A breakaway 0.1″ male header strip is included, which can be soldered in to use the board with breadboards, perfboards, or 0.1″ female connectors, and the board has two mounting holes for #2 or M2 screws.

Breakout Board for microSD Card with 3.3V Regulator and Level Shifters with included header pins.

Breakout Board for microSD Card with 3.3V Regulator and Level Shifters plugged into a breadboard with microSD card (not included) inserted.

For 3.3 V projects, we carry a smaller Breakout Board for MicroSD Card without the 3.3 V regulator, level shifters, and mounting holes. This more basic module (shown in the right picture below) breaks out all of the microSD pins (including the ones used for the SD bus mode interface) rather than just the SPI-interface pins.

Breakout Board for microSD Card with 3.3V Regulator and Level Shifters.

Breakout Board for microSD Card.

For a microSD socket and user-programmable microcontroller on a single board, consider our A-Star 32U4 Prime controllers, which essentially use the same level-shifting circuits to interface a microSD card with an Arduino-compatible ATmega32U4 MCU running at 5 V.

Since many microcontrollers have built-in SPI interfaces, most hobbyist projects communicate with Secure Digital cards in SPI bus mode; this is the only mode supported by this board. (The alternative SD bus mode is proprietary, and a license from the SD Association is required for access to the full specifications.) The pins on this board are labeled according to their functions in SPI mode.

The board is powered by applying 5 V to the VDD pin, and all of the logic pins can be interfaced directly with 5 V systems thanks to integrated level shifters. The output of the integrated 3.3 V regulator can be accessed through the 3V3 pin, and the regulator can be disabled to turn off the microSD card and save power by driving the EN pin low.

By default, the EN and CD (Card Detect) pins are each pulled up to VDD through 100 kΩ resistors. However, there are cuttable traces on the underside of the board to allow you to disconnect each pull-up as desired. These traces are located between pairs of pads (labeled “EN” and “CD” on the board’s silkscreen) that can be bridged with solder to reconnect the pull-up resistor. Alternatively, the neighboring EN and CD pads of these surface-mount jumpers (highlighted in the picture below) can be connected if you want the regulator to automatically be enabled when the microSD card is inserted and disabled when it is removed.

Communicating with a microSD card

The SD Association publishes a set of simplified specifications for SD cards containing information on interfacing with them. However, there are a number of ways to get started without understanding the specifications or writing your own code from scratch, since many microcontroller development platforms provide libraries for communicating with SD cards. For example:

The SD library for Arduino provides functions for accessing files and directories on an SD card. (It also works with Arduino-compatible boards like our A-Star programmable controllers.)

The SD Card File System library for mbed allows similar filesystem access.

Schematic

Breakout Board for Micro SD Card with 3.3V Regulator and Level Shifter schematic diagram.

This schematic is also available as a downloadable pdf (106k pdf).

People often buy this product together with:

Wouldn't it be cool to drive a tiny OLED display, read a color sensor, or even just flash some LEDs directly from your computer?  Sure you can program an Arduino or Trinket to talk to these devices and your computer, but why can't your computer just talk to those devices and sensors itself?  Well, now your computer can talk to devices using the Adafruit FT232H breakout board!

What can the FT232H chip do?  This chip from FTDI is similar to their USB to serial converter chips but adds a 'multi-protocol synchronous serial engine' which allows it to speak many common protocols like SPI, I2C, serial UART, JTAG, and more!  There's even a handful of digital GPIO pins that you can read and write to do things like flash LEDs, read switches or buttons, and more.  The FT232H breakout is like adding a little swiss army knife for serial protocols to your computer!

This chip is powerful and useful to have when you want to use Python (for example) to quickly iterate and test a device that uses I2C, SPI or plain general purpose I/O. There's no firmware to deal with, so you don't have to deal with how to "send data to and from an Arduino which is then sent to and from" an electronic sensor or display or part.

This breakout has an FT232H chip and an EEPROM for onboard configuration. You can read tons more about this chip from FTDI's page and check out our tutorial on how to get started and use our Python code to control the FT232H with Mac/Win/Linux.