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I have a subsea sensor which is pole mounted and rigidly attached to the side of a boat. The sensor reports pitch, roll and magnetic heading information with respect to an alignment mark on the front of the sensor.

Unfortunately, we are finding that the heading reading is inaccurate and often disturbed by local magnetic interference so we have decided to use a much more accurate heading source provided by the boat.

We would still like to make use of the pitch and roll values from the subsea sensor though.

The problem I foresee is that our subsea sensors "zero" alignment mark may often not align with the "zero" alignment mark of the vessel. It may be that the sensor is mounted 90 degrees offset from the front of the vessel therefore I believe that somehow, I need to use this offset to recalculate a new pitch/roll with respect to the vessels frame.

One issue I have - which could be considered quite big - is that I have absolutely no idea where to start. Whether what I think I need to do is actually correct and if so, I couldn't even think about where to begin.

Does this even make sense to anyone? If so, I'd greatly appreciate some pointers.

weblar83
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  • I like this problem (although I am not sure if it might be too broad for SO). Can you actually measure the offset between the alignment marks or would you prefer some (semi-) automatic calibration? What do the readings give you? An orientation w.r.t. a horizontal plane with an axis pointing north? – Nico Schertler Mar 08 '19 at 03:35
  • @NicoSchertler Unfortunately I find most questions too broad for SO. At the moment, we can measure the offset but further down the line, a semi-auto calibration would be ideal for the end users. If you imagine the sensor being a Coca Cola can, with the ring-pull representing the "zero" mark - the pitch and roll (as well as the incorrect heading) are wrt to this feature. Does this make sense? – weblar83 Mar 08 '19 at 07:52

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