PNI SENtral - Manual (Page 4)

PNI Sensor Corporation Doc #1018049 R03
SENtral Technical Data Sheet Page 3
1 Product Overview
The SENtral

Motion Coprocessor is an integrated circuit that makes it easy to quickly integrate,
optimize and operate multiple sensors on mobile consumer electronics devices. SENtral manages
and uses data from a user-specified 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer, and 3-axis
magnetometer to provide reliable motion tracking and an accurate compass heading, while
consuming about 1% of the power of a comparable sensor fusion microprocessor.
Note: This revision of the SENtral Technical Datasheet applies to Configuration Files of revision 1.1 or
higher. The Configuration File is discussed in Sections 1.2, 5.1, 5.6.2, and 6, and
Appendix I . It is
generated by the SENtral Configuration Tool and is uploaded into SENtral RAM after power up.
1.1 SENtral Features and Benefits
Features and benefits of the SENtral Motion Coprocessor include:

Low power consumption. Offloads sensor processing from the less efficient host
CPU, consuming <1% of the power of a Cortex M0 running a comparable sensor
fusion algorithm. Provides the ability to tailor the tradeoff between power
consumption and motion-tracking performance.

Industry-leading heading accuracy. Unparalleled heading accuracy for consumer
electronics applications.

Continuous hard and soft-iron magnetic auto-calibration. Provides continual
background calibration of the sensors. Leverages PNI’s more than 20 years of
experience and expertise in magnetic measurement.

Magnetic anomaly compensation. Heading and motion tracking is unaffected by
magnetic anomalies such as rebar in buildings, desks, speakers etc., that can easily
throw off the accuracy. SENtral recognizes and compensates for these anomalies.

Sensor flexibility. Works with common consumer electronic MEMS motion sensors,
so system designers can choose the sensors most appropriate for their systems.

Small form-factor. 1.6x1.6x0.5 mm chip-scale package on 0.4 mm pitch. Uses little
PCB real estate, allowing for painless integration.

I 2
C interface. Uses the industry-standard I
2
C protocol to interface to the sensors and
the host, so system integration is straightforward. Standard, Fast, Fast Plus, and High
Speed are supported on the host bus.

Outputs. SENtral outputs quaternions, Euler angles (heading, pitch, & roll), and
sensor data (rotational velocity, linear acceleration, & magnetic field).