Earth's magnetic field

[Ralph Cameron]

While browsing the web I saw a completed Picaxe project to detect the earth's magnetic field - using a hand made coil as the sensor. As luck would have it, I lost the reference. There was a clear colour photo of the completed project. Can anyone point me to it?

Thanks

 

[marky26uk]

Magnetometer

Hi, you might want to try here:-
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/magnetometer/

Sure you'll get help here as i've had it many times, i'm also a member of this group.
There are circuit diagrams on here too which might give you some other ideas for a magnetometer, i use an ic magnetometer datalogging with a picaxe.

Yours,
Mark

 

[Brietech]

Marky - If you don't mind my asking, what do you use the magnetic sensing for? I have 4 3-axis SPI magnetometers lying around, and I can't think of anything fun to do with them =) I had to build a magnetometer array for a school project I built (i made a 'magnetic-mapping' system), but they've gone unused since. Just lookin' for some good ideas =)

 

[Ralph Cameron]

Use of magnetic field

I'm just curious to see what variations there may be from season to season in the earth's magnetic field and whether such variations are measureable on land.

Thanks for the feed back.
Ralph

 

[marky26uk]

Magnetometer

I use the magnetometer for detecting disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field, i then know when to go look in the sky for aurora, which is quite rare here in the UK but there was one a few Years ago i remember.
There's also alot more than can happen due to solar winds & eruptions from the Sun that head towards Earth interfering with our magnetic field, this happens more when there are Sun spots on the surface of the Sun that tend to erupt solar flares toward Earth.
There's something called VLF, do a search on the net to find more about it but basically it stands for Very Low Frequency, after the Earth's magnetic field has been disturbed, you can usually receive weird sounds that are naturally generated by our own Mother Earth.
Sounds such as whistlers, dawn chorus & more weird sounds can be heard by building a very simple VLF receiver, schematics are on the web also.
If you're interested in this just let me know & i'll give you some links.
So having a magnetometer to detect disturbances, is very handy as i can then know when to listen on my receiver for these weird sounds & know how much the magnetic field is being disturbed.
Power stations & power lines can be overloaded from strong solar flares from the Sun, causing blackouts, radio & satellite communications can be badly effected also.
Using the magnetometer modules you can buy, you would have to amplify them more as these modules aren't that sensitive to detect these disturbances.

Yours,
Mark

 

[Ralph Cameron]

VLF

Thanks Mark, I've been a radio ham for many years so understand the influence of sunspots on VLF and most of the short wave spectrum. I guess I wasn't linking sunspots to whistlers and other effects other than aurora. The article I happend upon showed a Picaxe , proto board and hand made coil which I found intriguing.

I wish there were more hours in a day to play with this stuff but the magnetic sensors seem to be the fastest approach. I've just begun to play with a Picaxe 28X1 and it is quite remarkable what it can do.

Thanks again for your advice.

 

[marky26uk]

magnetometer

More hours in a day, lol.
Oh how i wish that could be too lol, what with work & such, there's so many ideas to be done with these cool picaxe chips, if i win the lottery then i would have all the time (or more time) in the world to experiment & such lol.
I remember when i first heard about the basic stamp kits, it was a dream for me, the only thing that bugged me about the basic stamp is that they had no real ADC's, one cool option they had onboard was the DTMF output which was handy in some of my projects, but they was quite dear in price so i was only ever to afford 2 of these.
Then the PICAXE came along with the ADC capability built in amongst many other options, very cheap compared to basic stamp, free software to program them & very good technical support.
My projects have rocketed since the PICAXE's came out.
Anyway enough of bigging up the PICAXE lol, one major problem i had with the magnetometer is temperature drift, but using the temp sensor DS18B20 & then processing differences with the picaxe nulled this out almost 100%.
Previous versions of my magnetometer before, i had to implement my temperature nulling out via circuitry & calibrating, which was alot more messing about, time consuming & not as accurate.
Well off to bed now, got an early morning tomorrow.

Yours,
Mark