SparkFun Forums

[John Meacham]

these (larger) gyros seem like they are much cheaper than the solid state ones. I was wondering if perhaps you could find a source other than canibalizing old gyration products.

http://www.gyration.com/en-US/GyroTech.html

Another interesting thing I have been meaning to do is pull the chip/ccd out of an optical mouse. you can get all sorts of neat diagnostic info out of them, including the raw CCD image of the surface. you could make your mouse scan whatever it is moving over, or place it at the bottom of a sumo-bot to get perfect feedback on your current location and how much your wheels are slipping and what direction you are being pushed...

[SOI_Sentinel]

I've seen the optical mouse hack before, interesting.

I've looked at these gyros, too. I actually have a few of the older and larger MG100's. You run into two issues with them. First, they can't operate under constant acceleration of above 3G's IIRC. A hit will floor the read components and you'll lose your tracking. Another is that for some applications, the 14.5Hz bandwidth is too small. For some it would be fine, but I don't see it reacting fast enough for a balancing bot, for instance (not running numbers).