Does anyone know where to find price-lists for these components? My websearch-fu has failed me.
Fibreoptic gyroscopes ("FOG" or "IFOG") rely on the Sagnac effect: fire light down a coiled optic fibre in opposite directions; rotate the coil and measure the delta in the photons' arrival time at the detector to infer the direction and magnitude of the roll. Resists disruption from heat and vibration, no moving parts. Miniaturisation of waveguides (a generic way of describing anything like a lens, that 'steers' a wave - whether radio or light or something else), among other technology-shrinking, has led to the electronics for these devices in the lab setting being embedded almost entirely on a chip. Indeed - and again just in the lab so far as I know - entire ring-laser gyros have been shrunk down to a chip (although I understand that the FOG remains a more precise instrument, for any given price).
I can't seem to find prices for them except here... is this a "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" situation? If they are indeed $100 each, surely we'd all be flying with them already, so I feel like that price is improbable. Also, those guys are in China, and I'm open to manufacturers elsewhere being suggested, although I appreciate for cheap electronics that might be unrealistic!
I'm not averse to the notion of using a DIY kit, but they'd be big and heavy, and time-consuming (I may never get around to it).
My thanks for any thoughts anyone has on this!
P.S.: also,re. other sensors, if I'm right to understand optical accelerometers are more accurate than the current mainstay (I failed to find prices for those too, but the improvements in that field are more recent), and if anyone has any tips on new lines of cheaper/more-accurate magnetometers I'd be interested (existing field-magnetometers with modest accuracy are ~$2660, but I'd hope that projects like nist.gov would bring that down).
Fibreoptic gyroscopes ("FOG" or "IFOG") rely on the Sagnac effect: fire light down a coiled optic fibre in opposite directions; rotate the coil and measure the delta in the photons' arrival time at the detector to infer the direction and magnitude of the roll. Resists disruption from heat and vibration, no moving parts. Miniaturisation of waveguides (a generic way of describing anything like a lens, that 'steers' a wave - whether radio or light or something else), among other technology-shrinking, has led to the electronics for these devices in the lab setting being embedded almost entirely on a chip. Indeed - and again just in the lab so far as I know - entire ring-laser gyros have been shrunk down to a chip (although I understand that the FOG remains a more precise instrument, for any given price).
I can't seem to find prices for them except here... is this a "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" situation? If they are indeed $100 each, surely we'd all be flying with them already, so I feel like that price is improbable. Also, those guys are in China, and I'm open to manufacturers elsewhere being suggested, although I appreciate for cheap electronics that might be unrealistic!
I'm not averse to the notion of using a DIY kit, but they'd be big and heavy, and time-consuming (I may never get around to it).
My thanks for any thoughts anyone has on this!
P.S.: also,re. other sensors, if I'm right to understand optical accelerometers are more accurate than the current mainstay (I failed to find prices for those too, but the improvements in that field are more recent), and if anyone has any tips on new lines of cheaper/more-accurate magnetometers I'd be interested (existing field-magnetometers with modest accuracy are ~$2660, but I'd hope that projects like nist.gov would bring that down).
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