In this work, a low-cost, open-source and replicable system prototype for thermal analysis of low-cost Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors in tilt measurement perspective is presented and tested. The system is formed of a 3D printed frame, a thermal cell consisting in a Peltier element mounted over a heat sink, and a control and power system. The frame is designed to allow the independent biaxial tilting of the thermal cell through two servomotors. The control board is formed by an Arduino® and a self-made board including a power drive for controlling the thermal unit and servomotors. We tested the chamber analyzing the behavior of multiple MEMS IMU onboard accelerometers suitable for measuring tilt. Our results underline the variability of the thermal behavior of the sensors, also for different sensor boards of the same model, and consequently the need for the adoption of a thermal compensation strategy based on thermal analysis results. These data suggesting the need for the analysis of the thermal behavior of MEMS-based sensors, indicate the potential of our system in making low-cost sensors suitable in medium-to-high precision monitoring applications.
Keywords: Arduino®; Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS); Peltier; accelerometer; thermal chamber; tilt.