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Comment by stankondrat | Hacker News Reader

Hello, interesting project! I scrolled through the pages of the site and read the patent, but it is still unclear to me: does the base station rotate the magnetic field (rotates a permanent magnet) or generate electromagnetic fields in different directions, or is the magnetic field of a static permanent magnet somehow overlapping in different directions 1000 times per second?

ps I won't sleep tonight until I understand how it works. :-)

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Yes, the base station rotates the magnetic field, though the third option you mentioned sounds very futuristic. We could be a magnet-bender!

Feel free to ask us more questions so we can all sleep soundly tonight :)

My futuristic variant is that around a static magnet there are sections of coils (or a magnetic screens with a Foucault current) with compensation of the magnetic field in the opposite direction.

My last guess before going to bed was that there are three electromagnets facing different directions. They turn on one after another. The magnetic sensor measures each value over synced time. The software calculates the triangulation from these values.

Do you mechanically rotate a large neodymium magnet?

We thought about that kind of concept in the early stages. We may eventually experiment with it, but not at the moment. It's a very cool concept indeed.

And yes, we mechanically rotate a large magnet, creating a unique magnetic field that allows us to track all 6DOF with a single sensor via our proprietary algorithm. No triangulation is needed.

Thank you for the answers! Many years ago, in university, I made a magnetic compass without using ready-made chips. This topic brings back memories for me. This year, I’ll definitely experiment in my free time, as a hobby, trying to bend the magnetic field. :-)

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