Rob,
There was a discussion here or on Arocket probably over a year ago on these units. I think the main concern with the Analog Devices unit (and maybe the Murata unit?) was the 300 deg/sec angular rate limitation. I think it would be pretty easy to induce a spin greater than this in a controlled rocket and "loose track" of orientation.
Stuart Leslie
The ADXR chips can easily be configured to increase their range, up to about
4X their original spec. This would give the ADXR300 up to 1200 degrees/sec. See the data sheet at:True...it looks like the ADXRS300 can actually be increased beyond this, up to 1200 degress/second but with some drift penalty if I read the datasheet correctly...(see the section on "Increasing Measurement Range")
gyroscopes,
Follow-up; Analog has tiny evaluation boards (in a DIP package) available now for the ADXR's, priced at $50 each. Limit 1, though this may improve when production ramps up.
And here's the doc on re-scaling the ADXR's for increased range:
BB, I assume the small $59 heli-max helicopter pizo gyro's wont do the job and arn't one of these chips ? I've never opened on of my gyros yet, and the friends I opened to fix a $250 JR head lock unit, I forgot to look at the gyro chip.
art
To the best of my knowledge, the ADXR's aren't in use in copter gyros - YET. I believe the copter gyros out there all rely on the Murata piezo gyro units, which are similarly priced, but more widely available (having been around for several years).
The ADXR's are supposedly more immune to G effects and in fact can survive being shot out of a howitzer. That should make them acceptable to most rocket experimenters, I think.
The only problem with the ADXR's is their limited availability, but this should improve.
p.s. If you want to play with the ADXR chips, you'd better have a suitable soldering station, they're packaged as BGA's about 7mm square. And don't drop one on your shag carpet. ;O) My advice, just buy them packaged on the evaluation board (DIP).
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