[2026] Magic Compass

This compass is something I have always wanted to build. In a treasure hunt, the compass will give you only a direction to a preprogrammed location. The user does not know how far the journey to the goal is or what to expect.

I actually did not expect the number of cool things I would learn with this project, which ended up covering global navigation, AHRS, Earth coordinate systems, Earth magnetic field models, electromagnets, recursive estimation and a tad of machine learning. The whole story can be seen in the YouTube video above.

Finished compass — The finished compass after assembly

Assembly 1 — Here, a single coil is mounted and attached to the stripboard. The red part is the DRV8833 H-bridge driver. Behind in blue is the GY-NEO-6MV2 GPS module.

Assembly 2 — The bottom assembly attached to the top cylinder.

Assembly 3 — Here, everything is placed. The small XIAO-ESP32-C6 is partly visible and a USB extension cable is mounted to the 3D printed shell allowing for charging and programming. The whole thing is battery powered.

Files

The source code can be found on GitHub. For other files, feel free to contact me.