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SignalK-Orientation

Overview

This library provides vessel and vehicle orientation information in Signal K message format. Available orientation data include:

  • Attitude (yaw, pitch, roll)
  • Compass Heading and Magnetic Heading (corrected for deviation)
  • Acceleration in 3 axes
  • Turn Rate
  • Pitch Rate
  • Roll Rate

It uses a 9-axis combination accelerometer/magnetometer/gyroscope attached to an Espressif ESP32 processor. Sensor fusion is performed by the ESP using a port of NXP's version 7 sensor fusion library, and formatted into Signal K by the SensESP library. SensESP also takes care of transferring the orientation data via WiFi to a Signal K server.

Using the hardware below, Signal K messages containing heading data can be output at up to 40 Hz.

Hardware

Orientation sensing uses an NXP FXOS8700 and FXAS21002C/FXAS21002CQ combination sensor, like the Adafruit 3463 module

Processing and WiFi connection is provided by an ESP32 module. It has been tested successfully on following boards:

The software is adaptable to work with other orientation sensors, but the most straightforward approach is to use the above already-tested hardware.

Software

The PlatformIO development environment and Arduino framework are used, with standard Arduino libraries plus these two:

Setup

Follow the instructions in the SensESP README to install Signal K and SensESP. The base installation of SensESP provides several built-in sensors - reporting information like Uptime, Freemem, and IP Address - which will be readable on your Signal K server once you have your hardware and software set up properly. For the most stress-free experience, it's recommended you don't try to use the orientation library until after you have successfully built and seen the desired output in the Signal K Server.

After you have the basic setup working:

  1. Start a new Project in PlatformIO for the Arduino and your processor platform
  2. Copy the platformio.ini file from your working basic project (above) into your new project folder
  3. Make one modification to your shiny new platformio.ini: add these two libraries to the lib_deps section, as follows. See this project's sample platformio.ini for more details and options.
lib_deps =
   [...]
   SignalK/SensESP @ ^2.5.0
   https://github.com/BjarneBitscrambler/SignalK-Orientation.git
  1. Replace the contents of your Project's main.cpp file with the contents of the sample file included with this library (found in examples/example_main.cpp Then edit your main.cpp to reflect the details of your particular setup (e.g. WiFi credentials, I2C pins connected to the sensor, etc). Be sure to read the comments in main.cpp that explain how to enable the various orientation parameters, setup the Signal K paths, and so forth.
  2. Build, upload, and test your Project.

Troubleshooting and Going Further

If you start with a basic configuration and proceed in small testable steps, it should go reasonably smoothly. If you run into difficulty, or just want to learn more, here are some resources:

ESP8266 Support Note

Versions of this library prior to v0.2.0 also ran on the ESP8266 platform, like the d1_mini board. In migrating to use the SensESP v2 library, support for the ESP8266 was dropped. If you really need to run on an ESP8266, you will need to pull into your build environment a version of this library prior to v0.2.0, plus a version of SensESP prior to v2.0, plus several other historical libraries needed by SensESP. This is not a trivial effort.

Memory Use Note

The more sensors producing Signal K reports on a single ESP32 module, the greater the run-time memory usage will be. If the module has less than about 9000 bytes of freemem (as reported by one of the SensESP standard sensors, and seen in the Signal K Instrument Panel), then this may cause difficulties. Symptoms of insufficient free memory include an inability to access the ESP module's web interface. No problems were observed when using all sensors in the example_main_all_sensors.cpp file, running on an ESP32.

One way of reducing memory requirements is to compile the ESP software with #define DEBUG_DISABLED. This causes the RemoteDebug library to ignore all the debugI(), debugE() etc calls throughout the SensESP code and saves about 8900 bytes of RAM. The downside to doing this is that any information one was gleaning from the serial terminal won't be sent anymore, however the Signal K and the sensor's web interface are unaffected. To define DEBUG_DISABLED you can either uncomment the appropriate line in RemoteDebug.h and RemoteDebug.cpp, or the easier way is to add -D DEBUG_DISABLED to your list of build_flags = ... in platformio.ini Remember to do a clean before rebuilding.

More memory-saving details can be found at SignalK/SensESP#239