Make: Drones

Chapter 19. Magnetometer

Back in Chapter 9, we talked about adding a magnetometer to the mix to prevent drift in the yaw axis. When you start doing navigation, knowing your absolute direction becomes more important. You may know where you are and where you want to be, but if you don’t know which way you are pointing, you can’t get there.

Humans have been using magnetic sensing devices for centuries, and animals perhaps for millennia. We’ve come a long way from floating bits of iron, both in our apparatus and in our understanding. Humans have learned, often by crashing ships onto rocks, about deviation and variation, and about the change in variation over time. The magnetic variation of my local airport has changed over half a degree during my ...