BHI160 gyro cuts out in rocket tests?

[pscheidler]

I have been successfully using the BHI160 sensors for years now, but I just got a call from a customer who had two of our products in a test rocket launch, both products were reading only the BHI160 gyro. While the rocket was in free fall, the gyro on all 3 axes went from around 3 dps to under 0.2 dps for 1.25 seconds, and then resumed normal operation, at which point the system was spinning at higher rates.

Other sensors in the system continued reading 3 dps. Any thoughts why this happened? Could it be part of an auto-calibrating sequence or safety feature? Other sensors on our product were operating normally.

[o_o · Accepted solution]

The BHI160 feature automatic gyroscope offset calibration. It is always enabled.

Whenever it detects that the device is static due to a constant acceleration, the gyroscope offset is calibrated.

In your case since the device is in freefall, the acceleration must have been ~constant.