LIS3LV02DL Breakout PCB

LIS3LV02DL breakout board has place for the voltage regulator, supply voltage decoupling capacitors and a LED indicator connected to the interrupt pin. Optional resistors allow to use the sensor with the I2C communication bus instead of default Serial Peripheral Interface.

Chip is a digital output 3 axis accelerometer produced by ST Microelectronics. It is a low-cost and high-performance sensor produced in the MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) technology.

The measurement of the acceleration is made using the indirect method. The force causing acceleration in an inertial frame is acting upon the proof mass hanging on the springs. As in result, the proof mass is displaced from the point of balance. Displacement is measured as a variation of capacitance between the proof mass and the frame of the sensor. This displacement is proportional to the applied force to the sensor. The technology of capacitance sensing allows for manufacturing reliable, low noise and good performance MEMS accelerometers.

Despite that this chip technology is more than 10 years old the LIS3LV02DL is still popular among laptop producers, as a part sensing a free fall in the magnetic hard-drives security circuits. This is only purpose why it is still in a production. It a quite tested piece of the chip.