Introducing the Freerunner Navigation Board

[Christoph Mair]

On Sunday 02 May 2010 17:06:55 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> But seriously, one Freerunner did go to (inner) space on a research  
> rocket (altitude was approx. 100 km):
> 
> http://freeyourphone.de/portal_v1/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1430&p=14569&hilit=d
> lr#p14569
And a second Freerunner will follow: http://www.mail-archive.com/openmoko-
kernel at lists.openmoko.org/msg10526.html

> I don't know exactly why Christoph & Michele developed this, but I can  
> imagine some areas (who finds other ones?) what that these sensors  
> could be used for. You develop new user interfaces (3D gaming :) and  
> generally improve portable navigation.
> 
> For car navigation, GPS is in most cases sufficient since a car goes  
> fast enough so that GPS can tell about the direction of movement. But  
> if you have a handheld device, only a compass and/or gyroscope can  
> tell that you are rotating the device. While the LIS302 accelerometers  
> can detect that you shake the device. This gives several new inputs  
> for gesture recognition. The arena is open for creativity...
In fact, inertial navigation was my primary goal. I'd like to use the 
freerunner to find the right exits within the much underground lines :)
Michele wants to do some research on how context aware applications could work 
on top of this.

In general we are very interested to see what the community will do with it.

> And, I think one can use the pressure sensor either as a weather  
> station (during hiking or skiing) - or to get the altitude and detect  
> ascent/descent better than with GPS. I think all these fine things can  
> augment and integrate with the GPS system.
The pressure sensor was a quick "relax from other developments" project. I 
like playing with new hardware and this device was rather easy to integrate, 
but as for now it is a nice addon for the navigation board.

Unfortunately the NOR bootloader does not work when both, pressure sensor and 
navigation board, are connected (somebody knows why?). :)

Cheers,
  Christoph