Copying other module design to my PCB?

Question

I'm designing a PCB in which I would be using an Arduino microcontroller. On the same PCB, I want to add an MPU6050 sensor. But the problem is that I am not sure how am I gonna be connecting it directly with the Arduino controller. There are several breakout boards or modules available with this sensor that can connect directly to Arduino. So my question is, is there a place where I can find the schematic details of these modules and just copy and paste the schematic and trace the connections with the microcontroller so it would work just like the module does? Is this the appropriate way to do it?

Answer 1

Yes, it's pretty common to copy parts of designs from other projects. You can't just download a picture of the entire circuit board and copy-paste it because of copyright (in most cases; some designers made it "open source" so you can), but functional elements cannot be copyrighted, so there is no rule against looking at how someone else solved a problem, and using the same solution yourself.

Sometimes you can find schematics for these modules, but not always.

Here's a module schematic from Adafruit. Adafruit is pretty friendly about you copying their designs, although I am not sure what the exact rules are. As you can see there is not much here. There is some voltage conversion circuitry, an LED so you know it's turned on, the pin connectors, some capacitors and the MPU-6050 itself.

Another starting point could be the MPU-6050 datasheet. The people who make the chip do want you to buy their chip, so they do tell you how to use it. It can be a bit more in-depth because they do not just give you an already-working circuit to copy, but if you look on page 22 of this document, they show you how their chip might typically be connected to things. Another useful getting-started point is the pinout table on page 21, which lists all of the chip's pins and what they do. On page 14-16 it tells you a whole bunch of data including the power voltage needed (your choice as long as it's between 2.375 up to 3.46 volts), current used, allowed temperature, logic input and output voltages (usually not a problem), I2C address, and and so on.