A new class of small precision MEMS navigation and pointing gyros from Silicon Sensing – PinPoint® – is now available to designers of automotive, consumer and industrial products wanting ‘real gyro’ performance and reliability on tight UPC, space and power budgets. Several low-cost gyros have been launched recently with impressive claims, but leaving the designer disappointed with the real-world performance delivered.
At under 6×5×1.2mm, weighing in at less than 0.08 grammes and drawing 4mA on its 3V supply, PinPoint® can hold its own among these new low-cost MEMS gyros. The difference is in the ring.
PinPoint® is the only MEMS gyro to use a fully balanced vibrating silicon ring, whereas others all use various forms of simple unbalanced, open-loop vibrating mass structures (e.g. tuning fork / comb type). The 3mm diameter balanced ring of PinPoint®, which resonates at 22kHz in a closed-loop control system, can be thought of as an infinite number of tuning forks integrated to create a fully balanced vibrating circular structure. This provides unrivalled rate output stability over time, temperature, vibration and shock for a MEMS gyro in its class.
Availability in two sensing options; ‘in-plane’ with the host PCBA (CRM100), and ‘orthogonal’ (CRM200), means PinPoint® can meet pitch, yaw and/or roll measurement applications on a single tiny PCBA. Other inclined solutions are also available where, for example in car navigation Head Units, the host PCBA can be at some inclined angle to the sensitive axis.
Apart from the outstanding bias stability of PinPoint®, other useful features include fully hermetically sealed ceramic LCC SMT package, analogue and digital SPI output modes, user selectable dynamic ranges between 75 and 900°/s for optimum sensitivity, user selectable bandwidth up to 100Hz for noise performance optimisation and internal temperature output enabling external thermal compensation.
Silicon Sensing has provided a respected and highly popular range of silicon MEMS gyros and inertial systems to automotive and commercial markets for over a decade. It has a formidable reputation in the automotive industry – supplying over 3 million ESC yaw rate sensors per year with warranty returns less than 1 part/million.
Eric Whitley, Business Development Executive at Silicon Sensing, said: “We are delighted by the strength of reaction from key customers involved in our pre-launch evaluation programme. Several are already taking production parts for existing products, others have selected PinPoint® for their next application, and we are now gearing up for the expected rush of designers eager to get their hands on this new gyro now that it’s in full production. We are particularly proud of this latest development and we look forward to ‘PinPoint®’ becoming synonymous with the word gyro.”
