Gyroscope on Sensor Board

[Regorlas]

The current version of Pixelblaze sensor board has an accelerometer for fun effects, but two forum threads have asked about a gyroscope.

1. Expansion Board
2. Example patterns using 3-axis accelerometer

Benefit: Still fuzzy so far. Both of those threads were exploratory, neither of them (yet) describe a concrete example where gyroscope is critical.

Cost: Adding a gyroscope (or replacing existing 3-DOF sensor with 6- or 9-DOF sensor) would require change to the sensor board BOM, PCB layout, STM32 firmware, and Pixelblaze to expose a new API.

Unknown (to me): Is there a way to patch gyroscope data into a current revision Pixelblaze for exploration and prototyping of patterns?

[wizard]

See also

Sensing wheel position with the accelerometer

My initial test of using the accelerometer to determine the rotational position of a bicycle wheel and keep the pattern stationary. Had to dust off my trigonometry skills for this one!

And a request as a built in feature:

Input needed: functions wishlist

Ok, here’s one from left field… A function that uses the accelerometer to determine the rotational position of a wheel, such as on a bicycle. The PB w/sensor board would be mounted near the center hub with the X and Y axes pointing out toward the rim. The Z axis would be parallel with the axle and would not be part of the equation. One caveat: since the accelerometer could not be mounted in the exact center of the wheel, there would be some extra force added to both X and Y when the wheel is s…

Rotation acceleration would be very handy for quickly adjusting to changes in rotation, where the gravity vector might not be sufficient.

There’s also some algorithms that can integrate 6 or 9 axis information to give really good orientation and improved dead-reckoning positional information.

I’m prototyping a version of the Pico with a 6 axis (accel +gyro) for use in poi / staves / hoops.

A future version of the sensor board could use this too.

[Regorlas]

Great to hear accel+gyro is already in the works, I look forward to playing with it.