How to Use MPU6050 With Raspberry Pi Pico or Pico W

The MPU6050 is arguably the most popular MEMS accelerometer used for the Raspberry Pi and Arduino. It has a 6-axis sense with a temperature sensor on board. It is valued for its low power, simplicity, and surprising accuracy for such a low-cost sensor. If you want to know how this thing operates at a high level I also have a video on that.

In this tutorial, I quickly demonstrate how to get started using the MPU6050 in conjunction with MicroPython and the Raspberry Pi Pico.

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1-) Raspberry Pi Pico or Pico W:

I am assuming you have headers soldered to the device. I used headers and plugged the Pico W into a breadboard which is common practice if you are experimenting with an array of sensors and want a nice flat surface to work with. You can use a female-to-female connector from the sensor to the Pico but it just looks sloppy and reduces the flexibility you have in experimentation. Thank me later when you start using breadboards.

2-) Pre-soldered MPU6050:

You can buy these pre-soldered on Amazon. It is nice if you do not want to waste time soldering... I can be better at soldering.

3-) Jumper Wires:

I just got these: Amazon

Additionally, you need a way to power your device. I just used a regular USB to MicroUSB. Surprisingly not all wires work, some do not transfer data as other wires do. The one I bought is here, just in case ;)

You only have to make four connections as shown in the photo:

• Red: Connects to VSYS on the Pico to power the MPU6050

• Black: Ground Pin

• Yellow and White: We connect to GPIO pins on the Pico to establish communication via the I2C protocol. Note that there are multiple GPIOs on the device; I just happen to choose 0 and 1. It does not have to be that way.

What is I2C?

• I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) is a communication protocol that allows multiple devices to communicate with one another over a two-wire bus. It is commonly used in electronic devices to communicate between integrated circuits (ICs) on the same board.

• The two wires in an I2C bus are the SDA (serial data) and SCL (serial clock) lines. The SDA line carries the data, while the SCL line is used to synchronize the data transfer.

• In I2C, one device acts as the master and controls the clock, while the other devices act as slaves. The master device initiates communication and generates the clock signal, while the slave devices respond to the master's requests.

• I2C is widely used due to its simplicity, low pin count, and multi-master capability. It's used in many applications such as temperature sensors, RTC, EEPROM, ADCs, and LCDs.

• I2C is a widely used communication protocol and it's supported by most microcontrollers and microprocessors, including the Raspberry Pi Pico.

Save these libraries into the lib directory on the pico:

• https://github.com/shillehbean/youtube-channel/blob/main/vector3d.py
• https://github.com/shillehbean/youtube-channel/blob/main/imu.py

Save the following code in any script on your device:

#Shows Pi is on by turning on LED when plugged in
	LED = machine.Pin("LED", machine.Pin.OUT)
	LED.on()
	

	from imu import MPU6050
	from time import sleep
	from machine import Pin, I2C
	

	i2c = I2C(0, sda=Pin(0), scl=Pin(1), freq=400000)
	imu = MPU6050(i2c)
	

	while True:
	    ax=round(imu.accel.x,2)
	    ay=round(imu.accel.y,2)
	    az=round(imu.accel.z,2)
	    gx=round(imu.gyro.x)
	    gy=round(imu.gyro.y)
	    gz=round(imu.gyro.z)
	    tem=round(imu.temperature,2)
	    print("ax",ax,"\t","ay",ay,"\t","az",az,"\t","gx",gx,"\t","gy",gy,"\t","gz",gz,"\t","Temperature",tem,"        ",end="\r")
	    sleep(0.2) 

This is the main script you will be running.

• It established an i2c object used in the MPU6050 library, this is what you need to start getting connections
• It pulls the values in a while loop with no exit condition. You would need to manually hit stop in the program for this code to exit
• I do some rounding for display purposes
• I use a sleep value of 0.2 seconds to not overwhelm the user by seeing too many values, you can change this.

That is pretty much it, it is that simple to get started. You can watch other videos of the MPU6050 on my channel, which you can also, like, comment, and subscribe to!