NYC Resistor

We learn, share, and make things

Arduino + Compass = I know which way is North!

By: Bre Pettis
October 07th, 2007

sensors.gif

A-Bog’s got a writeup of code he grabbed from the sparkfun forums to get the arduino to talk to their compass. – Link

Sparkfun’s compass is cute, but a tad spendy. – Link

Hoeken had mentioned a $15 dollar digital compass and I found the link to get the compass, I bought one! – Link

Here’s a little circuit to play with it. – Link

2 comments
  • http://mrfuture.com Bill McIntyre

    I like it! Cheap is good.

    Here’s the module I used on the poor man’s GPS:

    http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=29123
    At $30, it’s a bit more expensive, but the trade off is in having a serial interface, and ridiculously high precision.

    The downside is that you need an arctangent-like function to make the serial data usable. It spits out two readings that need to be combined:: eg:
    angle = x ATN -y ‘ Convert x and y to brads

    angle = angle */ 360

    For some micros, this is easy, others you can probably fake it out with a lookup table.

    Hope this is somewhat useful,

    Bill

  • http://blog.litstudios.com/index.php?/archives/21-Real-BMX-handlebars-as-a-wireless-controller.html Blog.LitStudios.com

    Real BMX handlebars as a wireless controller…

    Using a set of real BMX handlebars as a wireless controller for a custom videogame using both opensource hardware and software including the Arduino and Blender3D. Read On.
    I just got back from San Francisco. I did something I often do when I visi…