Is it possible to calibrate with USB, so long as all other magnetic interference is largely eliminated? Or is it an absolute must?
One more question: I have the Ublox Neo 6M (M8M) it does indeed have an on board compass, but only has a single cable set. What can I do or what are some of my options to use that Auxiliary Mag? Do I have to cut the cable and splice out a new cable? Or do I have to solder a new cable on some tabs on the GPS Board? None of the above if I build V 16.xx of LP? Cheers, thank you so much
Hi Jayson,
It is not recommended to calibrate with USB, as your laptop might be too close and you may break your USB connector on Revo, they're fragile, it's micro-usb.
You should calibrate outdoors far from magnetic interference. Best is to press 5x Save, and on the last 6th calibration step, just rotate slowly at all axis, all directions, and diagonal, to get as much samples as possible.
You should also adjust Virtual Board Rotation to rotate magnetometer in GPS unit, such that it matches magnetometer in flight controller with it's orientation and level (this is important).
On your photo you have Mag which is routed to L (SCL) and A(SDA) pins. Best is to check with multi-meter (continuity mode) if those close pads correspond to the L and A pins. Then you can safely solder there your own pair of wires, route it out from GPS unit and use JST-SH 1.0 4pin connector (pre-assembled crimped wires from ebay) to connect to flexi-io port.
Other thing is that I2C uses 400kHz fast-mode, so cross-talk if SCL and SDA is too close may occur (
maybe). Best practice would be to route those wires far apart and keep them short, below 10cm. If you have longer than 10cm I2C wires, it may work, or may not, depends on capacitance and timing. There are some tricks like pull-up resistor which may help on longer wires, but I am not a hardware guy, so my advice is try first by keeping I2C wires short and far apart or twisting scl with vcc and sda with vdd, if that does not work, then google a bit.
Another option is getting Naza compatible GPS, which has magnetometer and gps over just single serial line, and uses just one port on Revo instead of two.