MEMS are quite common in the sensor world today. If you count up all the devices used in automobiles alone, you’d likely be in the tens of millions, in not hundreds. To that end, Murata has developed the SCA3300 series of high performance, three-axis MEMS accelerometers aimed at both industrial and automotive applications. The surface-mountable device measures just 7.6 by 8.6 by 3.3 mm. The operating temperature ranges from –40°C to +125°C.

The SCA3300 offers a user-selectable measurement range of 1.5, 3, or 6 g and features better than 10 mg offset stability and a non-linearity of 0.1%. Housed in a pre-molded dual flat-lead SMD package, it operates from a 3.3-VDC supply and consumes only 1 mA during normal operation. Hence, battery-powered applications are possible. In low-power mode, consumption drops to about 0.5 mA. Communication with the host application is handled through a standard SPI interface.

To simplify system design and integration, an evaluation board is available that incorporates a Java-based GUI to graph sensor output, data logging, and data rate calculations.