The average Hackaday reader likely knows, at least in the academic sense, what a magnetic field looks like. But as the gelatinous orbs in our skull can perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, we have to take those textbook diagrams at face value. That is, unless you’ve got one of these nifty magnetic field visualizers developed by [Dr.Stone].
Using an XMC1100 microcontroller development board and a TLV49 3D magnetic sensor, the device is able to track the poles of a magnet in real-time and produce an approximation of what the field lines would look like on its electronic paper display. Relative field strength is indicated by the size of the visualization, which allows the user to easily compare multiple magnets. Incidentally, [Dr.Stone] notes that the current version of the hardware and software can only handle one magnet at a time; visualizing complex magnetic fields and more than two poles would take an array of sensors and likely a more powerful processor.
Do you need to visualize the field lines around a magnet? Perhaps not. But being able to quickly get an idea of how strong a magnet is and identify where its poles are could certainly come in handy. We’d like to see [Dr.Stone] take the project to the next phase and turn this into a handheld device for convenient workbench use. It would be a lot less messy than some of the previous methods we’ve seen for visualizing magnetic fields, though if you’re only worried about field strength, there’s arguably more straightforward ways to display it.
When I was a kid we used to visualise that with iron filings on a piece of paper. A mighty multiprocessor cluster, I tell you!
It works very well and in real time. No chops required and, it handles not only two magnets but many actually in, shock horror, real time. And that was, back in the ummmm 70’s at least.
As in circa A.D. 70.
#Winning!
BTW search for “magnetic viewer film” for the no mess version and easy to carry alternative.
“paper”, must be some fancy type of fpga if it can control so much particles at once in such a speed.
Nice Cylon model one reference in first paragraph!
Really nice – it not the same, but you might also enjoy this way of using long exposure photography to show fields > https://vimeo.com/7022707