How can an RTC feature stabilize an image sensor’s output?

At Sensors Expo 2019 in San Jose, CA, Sahil Choudhary, a product marketing manager at InvenSense, demonstrates how the real-time clock (RTC) feature in his company’s 6-axis (accelerometer and gyroscope) sensors provides accuracy and stabilization for critical imaging applications.

For a specific device frequency, say 10 Hz, the RTC input ensures that the 10 Hz occurs with 100% accuracy. By driving the external clock input, the designer can obtain the right number of samples in a specific time period. Using a Qualcomm RB3 robotics platform with Snapdragon 845 that has one of InvenSense’s sensors demonstrates the importance of RTC accuracy. After a few rotations of the demo without the RTC, the CLK OFF image shows slight drift from the image with the RTC input (CLKIN ON). For rotation detection applications, such as virtual reality, augmented reality and robotics, precise rotation movement detection is important.

InvenSense 6-axis family of motion sensor’s combined with its Motion Apps platform provide a sophisticated approach for motion detection applications. For example, the ICM-42605 of the SmartMotion platform can be easily evaluated using the DK-42605 development platform. The platform runs software including InvenSense MotionLink, a graphical user interface (GUI) based sensor evaluation tool, and the embedded Motion Drivers (eMDs) for motion sensor software development.

The eMDs in the kit consist of a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to configure various aspects of the platform. This includes ICM-42605 sensor parameters such as full-scale range (FSR), output data rate (ODR) and low-power or low-noise mode as well as the sensor interface to host (I3C^SM, I²C, SPI).