Evaluation of low-cost angular measuring sensors

Abstract

One of the main issues for performing Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is the high cost of metering devices. In order to make it applicable to the conventional structures with low defined budgets, low-cost sensors have been widely utilized. In this paper, the characteristics of a low-cost circuit (MPU9250) with low power consumption for measuring angles are studied. This circuit is composed of an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer. There are two ways of coding and using this sensor for angular measurements. In the first application, the accelerometer and the gyroscope of the circuit are only used to get angle around X and Y-axis. In the second application, the gyroscope is going to be added to the other two sensors in order to get angular measurements of all axis. The data accuracy plus the advantages and disadvantages of the response of this circuit regarding each code has been studied in this paper by using the codded sensor in some experiments. Although the second application showed less error from the expected results, it was less stable than the first application.