HMC5883L magnetometer breakout from SparkFun

I wanted to know the magnetic bearing for my airbot. So I bought a 3 axis magnetometer and got to work!

As I’ve previously mentioned, I purchased a SparkFun sensor pack. That also included the HMC5883L 3-axis magnetometer breakout from SparkFun.

Following the hookup guide (once I found it!) was ok – but yet again the raw numbers don’t really mean much.

Here’s what I had to do:-

• Configure the sensor
  • Continuous measurement mode (set the 0x02 register to the value 0x00)
  • Use 1.3 Ga as the accuracy rating (set the 0x01 register to the value 0x01 << 5 – has to be in the highest bits)
• Average the readings over a period of time (say 10 over a total of 0.1 seconds)
• Correct all readings for the actual position of my sensor
  • Annoyingly, this breakout from SparkFun has a 90 degree different alignment to the accelerometer and the gyro sensors!
  • So in my set up my x value is actually 0 – y, my y value is 0-x, and my z value is 0 – z. This is because I’m using a breadboard for testing.
• Scale the readings for my 1.3 Ga mode
  • Multiple by 0.92 scale factor
• Calculate the magnetic bearing from the X and Y values (a bit of pythag / sohcahtoa)
• Convert from Radians to Degrees

All pretty straightforward. It’s really annoying though that the breakout is orientated differently from the other sensors.