I still find it astounding that parts like this can be had in quantity 1 for a couple of dollars, probably close to a dollar each in quantity.
We live in the future, and we did back in 2008.
MEMS, in general, is a marvel in its own right. The idea of reusing the planar process that's used to make normal ICs, but to measure physical movement is quite an engineering hack.
This was a nice writeup and teardown, similar to the ones our fellow HN member kens does.
Can you look at the cheap ali icm20948 breakouts? their mag compass does not work without 1.8v level shifting and i'm wondering if it just low quality pcb planning and if the imu chip on it is real/fake/recycled/salvaged