I have been reading for days about this and see people using many different methods to do this. So I thought I'd ask for some advice before I start wasting money on parts that I don't need.

I want to track rotational changes in roll, pitch and yaw with reasonable accuracy. And I want to do this with minimal components. As I have never really used accelerometers or gyroscopes or magnetometers before I am not sure of what I can do with the data I get from them. Is a 3 axis accelerometer, or a 3 axis magnetometer or a gyroscope enough to do this on their own? Or do I need combinations of these? Which would be best?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

What are you trying to do with it?

When you say yaw, say I'm pitched forward 45°, is the yaw still about the vertical axis or 45° to vertical. Likewise with yaw and roll. Because of these ambiguities, it's rather complex. You may want to google quaternions and spacial rotation.

A simpler method would use a 2 axis accelerometer to act as an inclinometer and so provide pitch and roll relative to earth and a compass to give yaw. However, once you go much above 30° from vertical you will start to get problems.

Mike.

 

I plan on using it for a couple of game controller applications. If I tilt the device forward the yaw would need to be about the vertical axis. Roll isn't as critical at this stage, I'll start with pitch and yaw. I guess getting compass readings when the compass is tilted will be the difficult bit.