Help With Gyro

[Bronson]

Maybe my team misunderstood the manual, but it sounds like the yaw-rate gyro which comes with the crates is meant to detect temeperature as well as "Yaw". Also, the accuracy factor listed on the site is +/- 300 degrees. How does that work?

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by Bronson

Maybe my team misunderstood the manual, but it sounds like the yaw-rate gyro which comes with the crates is meant to detect temperature as well as "Yaw". Also, the accuracy factor listed on the site is +/- 300 degrees. How does that work?

The gyro can indeed detect temperature. Why? Because temperature has an effect on the gyro's ability to determine rotation rate. It allows code to very accurately interpret the values the gyro is sending out. Do we need to be concerned with this? IMHO, not really.
The gyro in the KOP only is guaranteed to track up to +/- 80 deg/sec, not +/-300 deg/sec, though that would be really nice.

[Bronson]

Thanks.

[AndrewN]

The mechanism inside the chip is sensitive to temperature.
The chips were designed to be used in aviation where temperature drops the higher you climb till you are operating in sub-freezing temps.
Providing the temperature of the chip allows the software to correct the values from the twist sensor to give adjusted yaw rates.

For the purposes of the 2.5 minute game on a level playing field indoors, doing the bias calculation at the start is good enough. Ignore the temperature.

The temperature will remain stable enough - unless you have it mounted right next to a heater.

Temperature is one factor that changes from day to day and why storing the bias in eprom is a bad idea.

BTW: Remember output T - Temperature, it's the other one you want.