Christoph Mair wrote: > Dear community, > > we are proud to release a hardware extension for our beloved Freerunner: a > navigation board! > > What is it? > The Freerunner Navigation Board is a small PCB which is able to measure > rotations as well as the magnetic field in 3D respectively (i.e. compass and > gyroscopes integrated). The navigation board can be integrated in the > existing > Freerunner case.
Will the magnetic sensing work with any orientation of the FR? One use for this is to help the GPS in difficult places. The FR is usually placed with the GPS antenna facing up. When the gps signal is good, this can be used to calibrate intertial eqipment. (I.e. automatically figure out what orientation the FR has with respect to the vehicle, how much the vehicle magnetic field distorts the earths field, and how much the local magnetic field deviates from true north.) For cars, one can get USB equipment to read the odometer pulses (and lots of other stuff besides that.) A similiar sensor can be made for bicycles - having an input for that on the board would be very useful. (And given the slow cpu, a pulse counter so the software won't have to rely so much on pulse timing.) This is great for driving in tunnels. There are many mountains and tunnels where I live. Having navigation work inside tunnels would allow mapping them accurately for openstreetmap. And also have underground navigation - some tunnels have got intersections/roundabouts inside, with several possible exits. And then there are cities with too many tall buildings, and things like parking houses. Helge Hafting _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community