MGSW1600 raw sensor data interpretation

Dear Roboteq,


I am using in my setup two MGSW1600 sensors for navigation, connected by RS232. How do I interpret the raw sensor data from the 16 magnetic sensors (at least, I assume they are) when using the command "?MZ"? From the documentation on p.14 (or p.17 when using CANBUS) the command only returns a single S32 variable.

Do the returned values:
1). Scale with total magnetic field strength (sqrt(H_x^2+H_y^2+H_z^2), where H denotes the local magnetic field vector at the location of the sensor), or
2). Scale with magnetic field strength in a specific direction, or
3). Mean something else entirely? If so, could you help me understand?

Additional questions:

• Do the returned values scale with magnetic field strength linearly, quadratically, or smth else?
• Is it possible to read the magnetic field strength in three dimensions?

Background
I'd like to read out the raw sensor data. By doing so a should be able to compute an estimate of the absolute angle between the magnetic tape and the MGSW1600, to initialize my navigation and calibrate the zero level of the gyroscope.


Thanks in advance,
Luuk

Unfortunately, I am not sure this is possible in our current firmware. I will have to check with Firmware developers, should have an answer next week.

Thank you, looking forward to it.

Best,
Luuk

Hey Luuk,

It ends up that it is very easy to get a raw sensor reading from our hall sensors in the MGS1600GY firmware. You can do this by using the MRS Controller command, which returns the hall sensor that you give it as an argument, which are sensors 1-10

You can implement this in a MicroBasic Script on the sensor using this snippet:Please keep in mind that the raw sensor values will be in Millivolts, and not processed so you will be responsible for processing them yourself. Perhaps this will be the subject of an application note, but it is certainly not something that I have done before.