Accelerometers' footprint aids wearables design

These are said to be the world's smallest acceleration sensors for space-constrained applications like wearables and hearables.

The accelerometers offer big performance in the industry's smallest package for design engineers requiring easy implementation without detailed application knowledge.

Built-in features enable the BMA530 to track motion activities with a step counter that is especially suitable for wearables.

At the same time, the BMA580 targets hearables with voice activity detection that features bone conduction.

Typically, microphones consume a lot of power in hearables because they need to be "always-on" to listen for voice activity, but bone conduction detects the vibration of the user's voice to wake the device from sleep for increased power savings in a miniature sensor size.

Compared to Bosch's previous generation accelerometers, the BMA530 and BMA580 have a 76 % smaller footprint (down from 0.95 mm to 0.55 mm.) in an innovative Wafer Level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP), making them easy to place on a PCB and integrate into portable products, while offering a flexible set of connectivity options, including an I3C interface.

The BMA530 and BMA580 accelerometers are supported by the BMA530 and BMA580 shuttle boards, available for order from Mouser.

The shuttle boards, when used in conjunction with the Bosch Application board which is available to order, provide an example application circuit, allowing rapid prototyping when incorporated into existing designs.