The premise

This idea came to mind while doing university field trips in which we learned how to use a geological compass and how to take measurements (e.g. dip direction/dip) needed for geological interpretation and reconstruction of planes, folds etc.. A lot of time is lost, and error is introduced, in saving the appropriate txt file with the appropriate format and tabulation. This project has the aim to create a low-cost, open-source electronic geological compass that reduces the time needed to take a measurement, write it down and afterwards rewrite in a txt to be used in other programs (Stereonet, wintensor…) by creating a tool that works as a normal compass but can save the measurements locally in the appropriate files for different softwares.

The planned compass features are:

• Measure dip and dip direction of a plane
• Measure strike slip, trend and plunge
• Quick profile switch (direction/dip, trend/plunge etc..)
• Automatic txt files save
• Calibration features
• Data elaboration software (pydip)

Components list

The Electronic Compass components are searched to be the most cost-effective and easy to solder available that I could find. I provide the links from where the components are purchased but some are europe based (mostly Germany) so check if worldwide shipping is convenient or not.

Software used

To have a truly open-source project the software used is 100% free and open-source from the CAD project files to the software used to code and flash the code on the adalogger chip.

Licences

Since the E.C. project covers hardware and software licences that cover both are necessary. You can find the choosen licences in the “Licences folder” in PDF and .txt format.

The copyrights to both hardware and software are explicited in the copyright.pdf and copyright.md files and the original copies are stored in the License folder. If you want to apply any kind of change you always need to log it in the changes.md file and include all the original source and copyright files as per licences.