The LIS3DH is a very popular low power triple-axis accelerometer. It's low-cost, but has just about every 'extra' you'd want in an accelerometer:

  • Three axis sensing
  • ±2g/±4g/±8g/±16g selectable scaling
  • Both I2C (2 possible addresses) and SPI interface options
  • Interrupt output
  • Multiple data rate options 1 Hz to 5Khz
  • As low as 2uA current draw (just the chip itself, not including any supporting circuitry)
  • Tap, Double-tap, orientation & freefall detection
  • 3 additional ADC inputs you can read over I2C

We kept seeing this accelerometer in teardowns of commercial products and figured that if it's the most-commonly used accelerometer, its worth having a breakout board!

This sensor communicates over I2C or SPI (our library code supports both) so you can share it with a bunch of other sensors on the same I2C bus. There's an address selection pin so you can have two accelerometers share an I2C bus.

To get you going fast, we spun up a custom made PCB in the STEMMA QT form factor, making them easy to interface with. The STEMMA QT connectors on either side are compatible with the SparkFun Qwiic I2C connectors. This allows you to make solderless connections between your development board and the LIS3DHs or to chain them with a wide range of other sensors and accessories using a compatible cable.

We’ve of course broken out all the pins to standard headers and added a voltage regulator and level shifting so allow you to use it with either 3.3V or 5V systems such as the Raspberry Pi + Feather series or Arduino Uno respectively.

Comes with a bit of 0.1" standard header in case you want to use it with a breadboard or perfboard. Four mounting holes for easy attachment.

There are two versions of this board - the STEMMA QT version shown above, and the original header-only version shown below. Code works the same on both!

This guide was first published on Nov 16, 2015. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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