// application note

AN0005 Interfacing STMicroelectronics MEMS sensors over I3C with the Binho Supernova

The current generation of STMicroelectronics MEMS sensors offers a MIPI I3C interface alongside I2C and SPI. This application note shows how to bring one up from a Binho Supernova USB host adapter and the Binho I3C Target Board, and how to exercise the I3C features the sensor implements, without writing any firmware. It covers enumeration and dynamic address assignment, identifying a part from the bus rather than a lookup table, register access, streaming decoded sensor data, in-band interrupts with no interrupt pin connected, motion-triggered interrupts, and group addressing. Worked examples use the LSM6DSV six-axis IMU and the LPS22DF pressure sensor, and a reference Python utility that produced every output in this document is supplied.

Products: Binho Supernova
Protocols: I3C
Topics: MEMS Sensor Bring-up
Revision: Rev 1.1 · September 3, 2026

// outcomes

What you'll walk away with

By the end of this document a reader with the hardware in front of them will have enumerated a sensor onto an I3C bus, identified it from its own registers, read and written registers, streamed decoded measurements, received in-band interrupts at the sensor's configured output data rate with no interrupt pin connected, triggered an interrupt by tapping the board, and established what the target implements from observable effects.

The two parts worked through are the LSM6DSV and the LPS22DF. Both are exercised on hardware and every output in this document is a real capture.

// background

Background

The current generation of STMicroelectronics MEMS sensors offers a MIPI I3C interface alongside I2C and SPI, on the same two pins. I3C keeps that two-wire footprint and adds a substantial feature set on top of it.

Table: What I3C adds to a two-wire sensor interface

Feature	What it gives a design
Dynamic address assignment	The controller hands out addresses at run time, so static address collisions stop being a board-design constraint and identical parts can share a bus
Identification from the bus	Every target reports a 48-bit provisional identifier, a device class and its bus capabilities, so a controller can enumerate a bus it was not built for
Common command codes	A standard command set, broadcast and direct, for enumeration, identification, configuration, interrupt control and reset, the same on every compliant target
In-band interrupts	The sensor interrupts the host on the data line, carrying a byte that says why, so no interrupt pin has to be routed or allocated
Group addressing	One write reaches several targets at once, addressed as a group
Higher signalling rates	Push-pull clocking, to 12.5 MHz in single data rate mode, against the open-drain limits of I2C
Lower power	Push-pull signalling avoids the static pull-up current I2C spends continuously, and activity states let a controller tell targets what bus latency to expect so they can idle harder
Hot-join	A target powered up after the bus is running can ask to be enumerated
Timing control	The controller can have targets timestamp their interrupts against a shared reference
Standard reset and recovery	A defined target reset and defined error detection and recovery, rather than per-vendor sequences
I2C compatibility	Legacy I2C devices can share the bus

A target implements the subset of that a sensor needs, and the subset differs between parts. This note works through two STMicroelectronics parts from a Binho Supernova USB host adapter and the Binho I3C Target Board: enumerating them, identifying them from the bus, reading and writing registers, streaming decoded measurements, getting interrupts over the data line with no interrupt pin connected, triggering one by tapping the board, and establishing which of the features above each target actually implements.

Nothing here requires a microcontroller, firmware, or a driver port. Every step is a command from a host PC.

// applicable devices

Applicable devices

Device	Function	Evaluation board	Exercised on hardware
LSM6DSV	6-axis IMU, accelerometer and gyroscope	STEVAL-MKI239AA	Yes
LPS22DF	Absolute pressure sensor	STEVAL-MKI224V1A	Yes

The method applies to any STMicroelectronics MEMS part with an I3C interface on a DIL24 adapter board. Adding one to the supplied utility is a single table entry, described in Section 11.

// what's covered

What's covered in the note

01 Introduction
02 Required equipment and software
03 First contact: enumerate the bus
04 Identify the part from the bus
05 Read and write registers
06 Stream sensor data
07 Interrupts over the bus, with no interrupt pin
08 Exercising the rest of the I3C feature set
09 Bus rates
10 Practical notes
11 The utility
12 Measured results
13 Troubleshooting

The full procedure, measured results, and reference code are in the PDF and the assets archive.

// materials

What you'll need

Binho Supernova USB host adapter for I3C, I2C, SPI & UART View product

Software Mission Control 3 or the Cosmic SDK (Python, C / C++ / C#). Get the software

Files The reference scripts and assets used in this note. Download the assets

// our edge

We don't just follow the I3C spec.

We don't watch from the sidelines. Plugfest after plugfest, our team is in the room where vendor I3C implementations come together — finding edge cases, debugging quirks, and validating real silicon against the spec.