STMicroelectronics (ST), a global semiconductor company supporting a wide range of electronic applications and customers, facilitates the development of intelligent motion sensor-based edge processing.

ST announced on the 9th that it has released a toolchain and related software package for programming the Intelligent Sensor Processing Unit (ISPU) embedded in the latest intelligent MEMS IMUs, the ISM330IS and LSM6DSO16IS. This toolchain and software utilize an ISPU to allow the sensor to directly handle motion-related workloads, such as activity recognition and anomaly detection.

This reduces system power and computation time, and allows sensor behavior to be specialized for the application without computation on the local microcontroller.

Using the ISPU toolchain, developers can program the intelligent processing unit of the sensor using the familiar and widely used C programming language.

You can optionally perform tasks in the Command Line Interface (CLI), Eclipse-based environments such as STM32CubeIDE, or GUIs such as AlgoBuilder and Unicleo.

The X-CUBE-ISPU software package features ready-to-use libraries, templates, and example projects, allowing developers to quickly understand how to utilize programmable sensors and ISPU programming methods, serving as a starting point for implementing customized algorithms.

Pre-built files are also available, so users can directly load X-CUBE-ISPU examples using one of the GUIs, and no coding is required.

In addition, you can also utilize GitHub repositories to access a wider variety of examples, tutorials, and other development resources.

Using these resources, it is easier to develop personal electronic devices such as wearable devices for activity recognition and health monitoring, as well as industrial applications such as asset trackers, equipment condition monitoring, robots, and machine controllers.

ST's ISM330IS and LSM6DSO16IS motion sensors contain a 3D accelerometer and a 3D gyroscope with an integrated ISPU.

This motion sensor has low power consumption of 0.46mA in low-power mode and low noise characteristics of 70μg/√Hz in high-performance mode.

The sensor hub function can collect data from up to four additional external sensors. It also has a built-in temperature sensor, and each device is implemented in a small 2.5mm x 3mm x 0.83mm plastic LGA (Land Grid Array) package.

The ISPU toolchain, X-CUBE-ISPU, and GitHub Model Zoo are currently available for free download on st.com.

The ISM330IS and LSM6DSO16IS intelligent MEMS sensors are currently in mass production, and samples are available free of charge from ST's eSTore or distributors. When purchased, the LSM6DSO16IS starts at $3.92 and the ISM330IS at $3.97.