What is the effect of metals, magnets and high current power supplies in the vicinity of the magnetometers?
The IG-30 and the IG-500 use the magnetic field to measure the local magnetic north. The Earth magnetic field is quite weak, and can be disturbed by other sources of magnetic field. Magnets of course, as well as ferromagnetic materials (anything that sticks to a magnet), and also power supplies that generate high current (several amperes) and their associated wires can distort the local magnetic field. The IG-30 and IG-500 have a built-in procedure to compensate for all these effects as long as the source of the magnetic distortion is fixed relatively to the device. External sources that move independently with respect to the device or sources that cannot be predicted cannot be compensated for and can generate error in attitude estimation. Placing the device at least at 2 – 3 meters from external sources of interference will make the error negligible. The IG-30 and IG-500 products can also be configured to ignore magnetic field in attitude computation or use other external heading sour
