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Compass driving me nuts!

StoneDeCroze

StoneDeCroze

Member
How the heck do you calibrate the compass? I've been waggling and waving it all over the place, but it STILL thinks everything is somewhere between North East and South:confused:
 
are you sat next to a computer while trying to recalibrate it? as from what i have seen close by computers really screw the compass up
 
nx1977 said:
Keep it away from magnets!
Click to expand...

:D I'd guessed that, it really is a bit weird, I'm going to borrow a real compass and compare it with that. I've also found a road that runs as close to magnetic north as possible, and I'm going to try orienting myself with that. I want to exhaust all the possibilities before I go through the agony of a warranty return:(
 
One of my work colleagues has a Nexus one, so I compared my compass to his. One thing I've found out is that it's much more accurate once the GPS has a lock. He also said that he does the calibration wiggle almost every time he uses it. We were reading "only" 8 degrees difference once we'd both got GPS lock and had performed the calibration wiggle. I'm going to borrow a proper commercial digital compass from a friend of a friend and see just how far out it is.
 
StoneDeCroze said:
One of my work colleagues has a Nexus one, so I compared my compass to his. One thing I've found out is that it's much more accurate once the GPS has a lock. He also said that he does the calibration wiggle almost every time he uses it. We were reading "only" 8 degrees difference once we'd both got GPS lock and had performed the calibration wiggle. I'm going to borrow a proper commercial digital compass from a friend of a friend and see just how far out it is.
Click to expand...


Let us know the results.. :)

I have a compass in my car, and the Desire shows pretty much the same readings..
 
I had a lot of problems with mine, did a Factory Reset and not had any since. I'd recommend doing this, just make sure you back up your apps first with (for example) Astro.
 
OOOOPS, sorry guys, I'd forgotten about this post. I will test it with a proper compass at some point. If it's still not right I'll try the factory reset.
 
I've had two HTC Desire handsets and neither have worked properly. Always tell me I need to recalibrate, and still useless after that's done. Think it may be a driver clash with Google mapps/Navigation. Heard that from HTC.
 
Well, I've FINALLY gotten around to testing it. The conclusion is that the best thing to do is calibrate the compass regularly, and mine is about 4 degrees out. Not bad enough to cause me any problems, but I wouldn't try to navigate around the world with it:D

I compared it to two magnetic compasses and two gyro compasses in light aircraft and as long as I calibrated it in each aircraft, it was close enough for Google Sky map type usage.
 
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