MPU6050 (GY-521) accelerometer + gyro with ESP32

Supply 3.3-5 V Bus I2C I2C address 0x68 / 0x69 Measures acceleration, rotation, temperature

Pins and ESP32 wiring

Pin	Role	ESP32 pin
VCC	Power	3V3
GND	Ground	GND
SCL	I2C clock (SCL)	D22
SDA	I2C data (SDA)	D21
INT	Interrupt	D35

Suggested wiring for the 30-pin ESP32 DevKit, avoiding flash, input-only and strapping pins. BoardPilot checks it for you as you wire.

Good to know

The address is 0x68, or 0x69 when AD0 is HIGH. (InvenSense MPU-6000/MPU-6050 Product Specification, I²C interface: slave address)
It starts in sleep mode and reads zeros until PWR_MGMT_1 (0x6B) is cleared. Libraries do this in begin(); your own code must too. (InvenSense MPU-6000/MPU-6050 Register Map, Register 107, Power Management 1 (reset value 0x40, sleep))

Check it is the real chip

Read register 0x75: a genuine part answers 0x68. BoardPilot does this automatically in “Debug a problem”.

Starter code (Arduino)

#include <Wire.h>

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  Wire.begin(21, 22);  // SDA = GPIO 21, SCL = GPIO 22
  Wire.beginTransmission(0x68);
  bool found = Wire.endTransmission() == 0;
  Serial.println(found ? "MPU6050 (GY-521) accelerometer + gyro found at 0x68" : "Not found: check power, GND and SDA/SCL");
}

void loop() {}

Sources

InvenSense MPU-6000/6050 Register Map, 4.32 Register 117 WHO_AM_I (0x68)

Try it in 3D in BoardPilot

BoardPilot Part data (JSON)

MPU6050 (GY-521) accelerometer + gyro on other boards: wiring and code

Arduino Mega 2560 R3 Arduino Nano Arduino Uno R3 WeAct Black Pill STM32F411CE ESP32-C3-DevKitM-1 ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 Nordic nRF52840 DK NUCLEO-F401RE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Raspberry Pi Pico W Raspberry Pi Pico Teensy 4.1

Learn the basics

Lesson: UART, I2C and SPI Lesson: Timers and interrupts I2C I2C address SDA and SCL Pull-up resistor Interrupt

Part data: CC BY 4.0, free to reuse with credit to BoardPilot.