Personal Compass Points to Your Spawn Point
A conventional compass points north (well, to magnetic north, anyway). [Videoschmideo] wanted to make a compass that pointed somewhere specific. In particular, the compass — a wedding gift — was to point to a park where the newlywed couple got engaged. Like waking up in a fresh new Minecraft world, this is their spawn point and now they can always find their way back from the wilderness.
The device uses an Arduino, a GPS module, a compass, and a servo motor. Being a wedding gift, it also needs to meet certain aesthetic sensibilities. The device is in an attractive wooden box and uses stylish brass gears. The gears allow the servo motor to turn more than 360 degrees (and the software limits the rotation to 360 degrees). You can see a video of the device in operation, below.
The compass module may be hard to find, but you should be able to modify it to work with more readily available boards. Since you may not be able to find the exact gears used, your build will probably be a little different anyway.
The brass and wood are decidedly steampunk looking. It reminded us of this GPS project. If you have too much street cred to buy an off-the-shelf GPS, you could always roll your own.
Filed under: Arduino Hacks, gps hacks
[original story: Hack a Day]