The Adafruit MMC5603 magnetometer offers an accurate and versatile way to measure magnetic fields. Magnetometers detect the strongest magnetic direction and are commonly used to determine magnetic north or to measure magnetic fields. When combined with a 6-DoF accelerometer and gyroscope sensor, you can build a 9-DoF inertial measurement unit that determines orientation using the Earth's stable magnetic field.

The sensor is based on the MMC5603 chip, which provides a ±30 Gauss measurement range without separate configuration and 20-bit resolution at sample rates up to 1000 Hz. This makes it ideal for measuring the Earth's magnetic field (about 0.6 Gauss) as well as detecting basic magnets.

Adafruit has built the chip and supporting circuitry onto a dedicated breakout board that supports both 3.3V and 5V logic levels. Connections are simple via I2C using two wires, or alternatively via SPI. STEMMA QT/Qwiic connectors enable solderless connections, and Arduino and CircuitPython libraries are available for easy setup.

The sensor is delivered assembled and tested.

Technical specifications:

• I2C address: 0x30
• 3-axis AMR magnetometer
• Measurement range: ±30 Gauss (±3000 µT)
• 20-bit operating mode, 0.0625 mG resolution/LSB
• Total noise: 2 mG RMS
• Heading accuracy: 1°
• Frequency response: up to 1 kHz
• I2C up to 400 kHz, SPI support
• Ultra-small package: 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.4 mm
• Automatic degauss function (SET/RESET)
• Temperature effect compensation
• Built-in temperature sensor

Package includes:

• Adafruit MMC5603 magnetometer
• Header pin strip

Links:

• Product page
• MMC5603 Datasheet (PDF)