Adafruit BNO085 Absolute Orientation Breakout (BNO080), 9-DOF, STEMMA QT/Qwiic

The BNO085 from the motion sensing experts at Hillcrest Laboratories takes the well-known 3-axis accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers and puts them on a chip together with an ARM Cortex M0 processor. The processor runs Hillcrest's SH-2 firmware, which reads the sensors and combines the measurements. The description is very similar to the BNO055 from Bosch Sensortec and yet there are differences. Through an agreement between Bosch and Hillcrest, the BNO085 consists of the same hardware as the BNO055. However, the differences lie in the firmware.

Here are the overlaps between the two sensors:

• Acceleration vector / accelerometer
  • Three axes of acceleration (gravity + linear motion) in m/s^2
• Angular velocity vector/gyro
  • Three "rotation" axes in rad/s
• Magnetic field strength vector / magnetometer
  • Three axes of magnetic field detection in micro Tesla (uT)
• Linear acceleration vector
  • Three axes of linear acceleration data (acceleration minus gravity) in m/s^2
• Gravity vector
  • Three axes of gravitational acceleration (minus any motion) in m/s^2
• Absolute orientation/rotation vector
  • Four-point quaternion output for accurate data manipulation

Thanks to Hillcrest's sensor fusion and signal processing wizards, the BNO085 also features:

• Application-optimized rotation vectors
  • For AR/VR, low latency and low power consumption
• Additional basic sensor reports
  • Separate and simultaneous outputs of the calibrated, uncalibrated + correction and raw ADC outputs for the accelerometer, gyro and magnetometer
• Detection and classification reports:
  • Stability detection and classification
  • Motion detector
  • Tap, step and shake detection
  • Activity classification

In addition, the BNO085 also offers a range of detection and classification functions by further analyzing the measured movement:

• Stability detection and classification
• Tap detector
• Step detector
• Pedometer
• Activity classification
• Motion detector
• Shake detector

Thanks to the Adafruit board, the sensor can be operated with both 5V and 3.3V and connected to a microcontroller board using the STEMMA QT connections without having to solder. Adafruit provides further information and libraries for Arduino and CircuitPython/Python: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-9-dof-orientation-imu-fusion-breakout-bno085/

The board comes assembled and tested with a pin header that can be soldered if necessary. Through the existing STEMMA QT or You can also use the Qwiic connection for prototyping STEMMA QT adapter cable fall back.