Sunday, December 1, 2013

An ADXL345 Breakout

I once purchased an Analog Devices ADXL 345 breakout board only to find out that it is incompatible with my breadboard. By that i mean it would fit in such a way that it was impossible to connect wires to one side of it and you had to connect them from below the device which was a messy job. The pic below shows the breakout board i got. (this is the pic after i modified it). As you can see it spans the entire row leaving no room on one side for connections. It made me want to get a larger breadboard, which, for reasons, was out of stock for months from a local dealer.


Another shot of the pins


As it can be seen, the solution was quiet simple. As i was going to use the device in I2C mode, I nuked the INT1, INT2, SD0, VC, CS pins. The board had by default the CS line conencted to Vcc that makes it use the I2C bus instead of the SPI and mounted the breakout on the power rail section of the breadboard as shown. I had to bend the GND pin 90 degrees to ensure a proper fit.


The bridge between the power rails is where the breakout goes into.


The GND connects to the opposite power rail or the Arduino header.

So, in case you happen to purchase this crappy breakout and do not have one of the large bread boards, this is the way to get things running. In other words, have a good look at the breakout, do not purchase it..

Here is a rough sketch in Arduino to interface with this breakout.