Design and Implementation of a Simple HMC6352 2-Axis-MR Digital Compass

This paper deals with the design and implementation of a simple HMC6352 2-axis digital compass. Most compasses have been of the analogue type with magnetic needles as pointers. Replacing the “old” magnetic needle compass or the gyrocompass by an electronic solution offers advantages like having a solid-state component without moving parts and the ease of interfacing with other electronic systems. In this work, the aim is to design and implement a digital compass. To realize this, we made use of HMC6352 which is a 2-axis MR (magneto-resistive) sensor from Honeywell, Arduino Uno board with an onboard ATmega328 microcontroller chip, and a 16x2 character Liquid Crystal Display (LCD).We adopted the magneto-resistive (MR) technology as compared to flux-gate sensors common in most electronic compasses which has the disadvantage of making the device bulky. The trial test carried out with the completed HMC6352 digital compass showed a reading of 232.8 degrees West indicating its effectiveness in direction finding. Keywords—ATmega328, Compass, Earth’s magnetic field, HMC6352, Magneto-resistive, LCD.