The Compass…

Another sensor needed during navigation and control was added to the IMU board. This sensor, a magnetometer, is responsible for measuring the orientation using the earth`s magnetic field. In a plane setup, the current heading can be easily determined by making use of consecutive GPS measurements.  On the other hand, a quadcopter does not need to stay moving all the time and therefore needs a sensor that is able to measure its heading while hovering.

The compass is mounted to an I2C channel on the top of the IMU board. Seen as a small extra daughter board. Running the mission planner command line interface some data was gathered to prove that the compass is functioning correctly.

Command Line Interface magnetometer test data

Command Line Interface magnetometer test data

Posted in Projects, Quadcopter.

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