Make your own NMEA Compass

[arbogaster]

I posted this under the "inventions / ideas" forum but that does not get much traffic. I though somebody might find this information useful.

I can not take credit for the information in the link but I have an Arduino like they show in this example and they are a really cool prototyping tool for electronics. I think for the average DIY guy this project is pretty doable. I have a Lowrance HDS system with the Radar so I was excited to be able to do overlay with the radar as well as track certain vessels. From what I have seen the electronics in this compass provide slightly less accurate information than what a $500 KVH does but I'm not convinced that the slight degradation in accuracy means anything to me for what I will use it for.

I'm considering building and testing one of these since I have all but $30 worth of the parts I need. Once i have tested it and confirmed that it works I would consider building them for sale. Even if I charged $200 for them complete that would be less than 1/2 what the cheapest electronic compass is as far as i have seen.

Check it out!

http://blog.matrixmariner.com/arduino_compass