POI Compass
Points at a place, not at north
IN MOTION
The needle holds its target
The case is turned through a full revolution on the bench and the needle stays put. Nothing about the needle is passive — it is a servo being corrected ten times a second against a bearing computed from the GPS fix and the fused magnetometer and IMU heading, which is why it reads as standing still while the body rotates underneath it.
- The display carries the selected point of interest, its distance, and the live bearing.
- Bearing recomputed at 10 Hz — fast enough to track a turn rather than chase it.
- With no usable GPS fix it says so, rather than pointing somewhere confident and wrong.
A compass that ignores north. Give it a destination and it points there instead, working out the bearing from its own GPS fix and the heading it reads off the magnetometer and IMU, then driving a servo to swing the needle.
It updates at 10 Hz, which is fast enough that the needle tracks smoothly as you turn rather than chasing you. Getting a clean heading took a capacitor across the noisy supply rail — the magnetometer was picking up the servo more than it was picking up the Earth.
Indoors it degrades honestly: without a usable GPS fix it can't compute a bearing, so it says so rather than pointing somewhere confident and wrong.
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