Why MEMS IMUs for Industrial?
Traditional industrial vibration monitoring uses piezoelectric accelerometers — accurate but expensive ($200–$500 per sensor) and requiring dedicated signal conditioning. MEMS accelerometers from TDK (IAM-20685, ICM-42688) offer:
Key IMU Specifications for Vibration Monitoring
Noise Density
Bearing fault detection typically requires vibration resolution of 0.01g at frequencies up to 5kHz. Calculate required noise density:
Accelerometer Range
Industrial machinery vibrates up to 50g during events. Use ±50g or ±100g range IMUs — do not use ±2g/±4g consumer IMUs.
Sensor Fusion for Orientation-Compensated Vibration
When the IMU is mounted on a rotating shaft, gravity coupling creates false vibration signatures. Solve this with a 6-axis sensor fusion algorithm using both accelerometer and gyroscope data. ST Microelectronics STM32 MotionFX library provides this out of the box.