gobigkahuna, we recently added firmware to our "Flight Data Recorder" to monitor a 3 axis digital compass and display a heading. The performance of this compass (HMC6343) is not too satisfying, though. Acceleration, tilt/roll, vibration, etc., seems to cause quite a bit of variation in the compass reading. The plan was to port the firmware over to our eLogger and OSD Pro, but more investigation is needed to determine if another compass would work better.

Regards,

Bill, for Eagle Tree

Thanks for the update Bill. Would the compass performance be any better at slower vehicle speeds? My application would be to use this in an underwater robot (max speeds around 2-3 knots). The only other 3 axis digital compass I know of with reportedly good performance are the ones by Ocean Server ( http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...oducts_id=8960 ) which cost $100 more than the HMC6343 and output NMEA sentences instead of I2C.

gobigkahuna, the compass performance issues were due to the wild and crazy forces encountered in an aircraft, I believe. I suspect the HMC6343 would work well in your slow moving robot.

It's quite easy to wire up the HMC6343 board from sparkfun.com to our car data recorder. The support for that is in an alpha version of the software.

Regards,

Bill, for Eagle Tree

Thanks Bill. I'm actually more interested in an OSD Pro. Any idea if / when the code will be ported?

gobigkahuna, it should be working now with the OSD Pro. I think we are in email contact also?

Regards,

Bill, for Eagle Tree

Yes, I got your email. Thanks very much.

I have OSD pro and I need magnetic compass.
In an old thread i saw that i could use HMC6343 to get a compass in my submarine.
Does this work?

Where could I buy this HMC6343 and is there any schematic of this?

Thanks in advice!

Hi xenon, we have some support for the HMC6343 board which is available from sparkfun.com. You'll need to solder on a diode to the board to make it work, however.

Um, so just out of curiosity...... what other "hidden" sensors may have support within the current alpha software? The reason I ask is because I am working on some fairly complicated systems and would love to be using eagletree for my "production" product instead of just for testing. I mean if there is more support for sensors or a way for us to gain access to the data stream for use with microcontrollers or even just to be able to display the data on an additional device without having use the picture, or being able to tx the data without having to use my video stream would be awesome.

Hi, the HMC6343 did not work well. We're working on a more integrated compass solution now.

Re other sensors, could you let me know what you might be needing? Feel free to email me if that's better.