First take at a LED lit acrylic and wood desk sign. The colors can be changed by touching the wood surface behind the letter D. There is a coil of wire inside a pocketed hole that can sense your fingers with capacitive sensing.
And this specific set of boards was not made with the MPCNC… but they were part of my motivation to build one! I would really like to replace the vinyl decals on the boards with a CNC’d logo that is filled with epoxy and lit with LEDs just like the other edges.
For anyone unfamiliar they are boards for a yard game called Cornhole. These boards are lit with WS2812b led strips that are controlled by ESP32’s. the ESP32’s communicate wirelessly and also have sensors to detect bag impacts and bags that make it into the hole. This was my very first arduino project!
GPS only has a 1s update rate, and doesn’t know heading, so you’d need to integrate it and it would have a lot of latency.
But with a proper IMU with an integrated Gyro you could use an EKF and combine the relatively fast gyro output with the “almost correct in the absolute” GPS sensor and really have something.
In the ag industry we use 2 gps receivers that are spaced apart from each other. Knowing the location of these will tell you direction even when still!
I like the idea of a the compass being a round cut-out mounted inside a hole in the table. It could then be mounted to the top of a servo and spun to match your current direction!
The IMU would work. As would dual widely spaced GPS receivers.
Some years ago, I tried to get my head wrapped around the methods used to integrate the data from the multiple accelerometers (linear and rotational) and magnetometer in the IMU’s. I barely managed a rudimentary grasp of the issue, and definitely didn’t get the matrix math being used at all. A bit above my college drop out understanding. 8^)
I have a lot of respect for the people who figured that stuff out.
Thankfully the IMU’s usually come “ready to wear”, and there are libraries for the arduino and such that allow one to just use the output.
It would have to be a pretty long boat for dual gps units to give you heading. Just sitting still all of mine drift around my actual position. Though I suppose roughly pointing east would help until you start moving.
