Multiple Gyros

[ebmonon36]

Our team is working on a project requiring multiple gyros. In LabVIEW, when we create the open gyro block, the options for the slot and channel only allow us to select channel 1 or 2, only allowing the use of no more than two gyros. Is there a way around this? Does this have anything to do with the FPGA?

Eric

[biojae]

Originally Posted by ebmonon36

Our team is working on a project requiring multiple gyros. In LabVIEW, when we create the open gyro block, the options for the slot and channel only allow us to select channel 1 or 2, only allowing the use of no more than two gyros. Is there a way around this? Does this have anything to do with the FPGA?

Eric

The FPGA only has 2 accumulator channels.
In order to get an average heading from a gyro, you need to continuously integrate your readings, and that is what the FPGA accumulator is doing.

You could do your integration in your main loop, but there is no guarantee of having a steady integration time, your dt.

Though, i have to ask, what are you going to do with more then 2 gyros?

[EricVanWyk]

I agree with everything Biojae said in that last post.

If you just want rate, not heading, you can just open the gyros as analog channels and do the conversion manually.

If you need heading information, you may be able to hack something together that is slightly better than what biojae was alluding to. However, it is not for the faint of heart. I was working on combining the oversampling engine with the dma engine to create a fake accumulator. Basically, the oversampling sums up N samples and the DMA deterministically sends them up to the processor. Then when you integrated in software you'd have all of the samples accounted for exactly once. I never got it to work fantastically, maybe you'll have more luck.

Enjoy!