Question: This is the first year (at least as to my knowledge as a student) that 2491 has worked with a steel belly pan. Has anyone done this with a gyro? If so, how did it affect it? Specifically we are running a pigeon 2.0. Our theory is that it will be fine because it’s surrounded by steel equally on all sides. If anyone has any experiences, please let me know!
Edit; (specifically we are worried about the magnetic forces of steel)
My team is using a steel belly pan with a pigeon 2.0, we haven’t had any issues.
We used one last year, the pigeon was buried between the steel bellypan, rio, PDH, and a bunch of wires, and we didn’t have any issues.
We also used a steel belly pan for ballast last year and had no issues.
Steel won’t affect a gyro at all. It will mess up a magnetometer.
The Pigeon has a magnetometer, hence the question.
I get that, but the OP mentioned a gyro and not a magnetometer.
I guess that would be part of the question then, does the pigeon use a magnetometer to help determine orientation? And if so does it affect its rotation?
I would not use a magnetometer in an environment surrounded by steel and rotating powerful magnets. The gyro and accelerometer portions of an IMU will be unaffected by such things.
Excuse me for my lack of knowledge but what does a magnetometer do on an frc robot?
If you bother to calibrate it at an event you can always have a true sense of where your orientation on the field is at startup and the gyro will be that much more accurate.
EDIT: See note below on why it’s not recommended
I’ll note here that CTRE officially recommends leaving the magnetometer disabled for indoor use due to noise. Personally, I’ve yet to see anyone mention if they’ve used the magnetometer at an event and how that went for them.
It’s just something that comes with many IMUs. Its purpose is to sense the magnetic field of the earth while in the middle of nowhere.
It does have one, but it shouldn’t really be used. If you use .getfusedheading it will use tge magnetic fields in addition to the gyro, but this is problematic because of all the electromagnets( ie motors) in close proximity.
When you use the standard call for heading it only uses the gyro which isn’t affected by the steel or electro magnets.
TLDR: it’s fine if you use the standard method and not .getfusedheading
This isn’t true out of the box, as the Pigeon ships with the magnetometer disabled. It’s therefore not used in getFusedHeading() in that state.