The Gravity Plug contains a BMA020 3-axis accelerometer from Bosch Sensortec, which is being replaced by a newer BMA150 chip. Luckily, it’s fully compatible in both hardware and software, so the GravityPlug implementation in JeeLib will continue to work just fine with either one.

But the new chip does have more features: you can override its calibration parameters and defaults, by changing values in a new EEPROM area added to the chip. That in itself is probably not too useful for simple setups, but the new chip also offers access to its built-in temperature sensor, so I’ve added some extra code and expanded the gravity_demo sketch to take advantage of that:

#include <JeeLib.h>

PortI2C myBus (1);
GravityPlug sensor (myBus);
MilliTimer measureTimer;

struct {
  int axes[3];
  int temp;
} payload;

void setup () {
    Serial.begin(57600);
    Serial.println("\n[gravity_demo]");

    if (sensor.isPresent()) {
      Serial.print("sensor version ");
      sensor.send();
      sensor.write(0x01);
      sensor.receive();
      Serial.println(sensor.read(1), HEX);
      sensor.stop();
    }

    rf12_initialize(7, RF12_868MHZ, 42);
    sensor.begin();
}

void loop () {
    if (measureTimer.poll(1000)) {
        memcpy(payload.axes, sensor.getAxes(), sizeof payload.axes);
        payload.temp = sensor.temperature();

        rf12_sendNow(0, &payload, sizeof payload);

        Serial.print("GRAV ");
        Serial.print(payload.axes[0]);
        Serial.print(' ');
        Serial.print(payload.axes[1]);
        Serial.print(' ');
        Serial.print(payload.axes[2]);
        Serial.print(' ');
        Serial.println(payload.temp);
    }
}

Here is some sample output:

GRAV 2 -10 130 41
GRAV 0 -9 133 41
GRAV 4 -14 127 41
GRAV 0 -12 134 41
GRAV 4 -15 130 41
GRAV 4 -13 129 42
GRAV 3 -8 128 41

The reported temperature is in units of 0.5°C, so the above is reporting 20.5 .. 21.0 °C.

Unfortunately, the old chip isn’t reporting anything consistent as temperature:

GRAV 51 -31 -225 2
GRAV 50 -29 -225 0
GRAV 51 -30 -224 1
GRAV 52 -30 -227 1
GRAV 51 -30 -229 1
GRAV 52 -31 -223 2
GRAV 51 -31 -225 1

I have not found a way to distinguish these two chips at runtime – both report 0x02 in register 0 and 0x12 in register 1. Makes you wonder what the point is of having a chip “ID” register in the first place…

Anyway – in the near future, the Gravity Plug will be shipped with the new BMA150 chips. It should have no impact on your projects if you use these accelerometers, but at least you’ll be able to “sort of” tell which is which from the temperature readout. Note that the boards will probably still be marked as “BMA020” on the silkscreen for a while – there’s little point in replacing them, given that the change is so totally compatible either way…