The ingenious micro-mechanisms inside your phone

Win oscilloscopes and more at Keysight’s Live from the Lab Event! Watch this video ad free on Nebula: ====================== How does your phone track its position in space? MEMS devices! Phones use small micro mechanical chips called MEMS, to monitor accelerations and rotations. These are fabricated using semiconductor technology, but are tiny little moving mechanisms. Today we’re decapping a six axis IMU (MPU-6050, on a GY-521 breakout board, containing three accelerometers and three gyroscopes), looking at it under the SEM, printing up some models, doing some high speed video recording, and talking about how these little MEMS devices work. CAD/STL models (fair warning, it’s a very challenging print!): 🚨 UPDATE! 🚨 A paper about this exact mechanism has been shared with me: Turns out some of my extrapolation was incorrect, whoops! The general principles hold, but the drive and sense directions are flipped in the X/Y gyros. === Timeline === 0:00 MEMS devices 1:40 Decapping 3:13 Tracing and 3D printing 3:52 Material Properties 4:37 Accelerometers (Z) 6:30 High speed footage 9:05 Accelerometers (X and Y) 11:04 Gyroscopes (X and Y) 15:23 Gyroscopes (Z) 16:52 Keysight Gear Giveaway 18:17 More SEM footage!