bronzetank | # 1 | 2009-12-28, 17:01 | Report

The accelerometer on my N900 appears to have lost its center point. I first noticed this when I tried to play Bounce the other day and the ball kept accelerating to the top right corner despite me holding the phone completely flat. To check it, I turned on the function that lauches the phone when you turn the N900 vertical...and it confirmed that the accelerometer is messed up.

My question is...what can I do? Is there a way to reset or calibrate the accelerometer? Is it possible that I busted it? Will be covered under the Nokia 1 year limited warranty?

Thanks for any help you might provide.

yorg | # 2 | 2009-12-28, 17:53 | Report

try taking the batery out for 30 seconds and see if it helps at all.

bronzetank | # 3 | 2009-12-28, 19:42 | Report

Thanks Yorg! Worked like a charm. However, I am a little sheepish now. Should have thought of that. I was always told that 50% of all computer problems can be solved with a full reboot.

Thanks again.

lcuk | # 4 | 2010-01-03, 05:09 | Report

hey, thats an odd one indeed, if this happens again, could you run liqflow and tell me if its acting oddly.
I've not encountered it before until cehteh mentioned similar in irc.

liqflow has been tested on loads of machines now.
even better would be a video of it acting strange.
it will show you really clearly where any offsets might be.

hcancelik | # 5 | 2010-01-03, 05:22 | Report

I actually have the same problem. It's impossible for me to play bounce since i had to give an angle (almost flat) which makes it impossible to see the screen to move the ball.

ovekaaven | # 6 | 2010-01-03, 06:02 | Report

Oh, removing the battery fixes the accelerometer? I thought mine was permanently busted (normal reboot didn't help), and would have to be sent in for service if I wanted it to ever work again.

For me, as I recall from when it was broken, if I switched the accelerometer to full-scale mode (echo full >/sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-3/3-001d/scale), the X and Z axis could be seen off center by about 6 G (the Y axis was still normal), but otherwise appear mostly functional (and in normal scale, these values would of course get clipped to the normal-scale's maximum value of 2G). I imagined its calibration got messed up somehow, but there's no way to calibrate it from software, neither the Linux driver nor the lis302dl datasheet gave any hope of anyone but the factory itself being able to calibrate the unit.

Happy to find out that the accelerometer wasn't permanently damaged after all...

juahan | # 7 | 2010-01-07, 20:36 | Report

I had my accelerometer also to get stuck. Z-axis was locked on 2.29, other axels worked fine. Removing the battery for a while fixed the problem.

brandl | # 8 | 2010-09-17, 04:32 | Report

do i need to run this command in every reboot? looks like works for me too.

worked for a couple hours. now broken again. i sent back to the store.. let's see

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Last edited by brandl; 2010-09-17 at 18:51.

brandl | # 9 | 2010-10-18, 01:15 | Report

i've found the accelerometer chip to buy here in brazil. the question is:
if i change it, desoldering and resoldering new one... would it fix this problem?

ossipena | # 10 | 2010-10-18, 07:32 | Report

different answer: it probably doesn't work because you probably can't solder the way the robots solder in the factories....