Compass direction is different depending on phone orientation

Question

My augmented reality app needs the compass bearing of the camera view, and there's plenty of examples of getting the direction from the sensormanager.

However I'm finding the resulting value different depending on the phone orientation - landscape rotated to right is about 10 degrees different to landscape rotated to left (difference between ROTATION_0 and ROTATION_180 is less, but still different). This difference is enough to ruin any AR effect.

Is it something to do with calibration? (I'm not convinced I'm doing the figure of 8 thing properly - I've tried various ways I've found on youtube).

Any ideas why there's a difference? Have I messed up on the rotation matrix stuff? I have the option of restricting the app to a single orientation, but it still concerns me that the compass reading still isn't very accurate (even though after filtering it's fairly stable)

public void onSensorChanged(SensorEvent event) {
        if (event.accuracy == SensorManager.SENSOR_STATUS_UNRELIABLE) {
            return;
        }

        if (event.sensor.getType() == Sensor.TYPE_ACCELEROMETER)  mGravity = event.values;
        if (event.sensor.getType() == Sensor.TYPE_MAGNETIC_FIELD) mGeomagnetic = event.values;

        if (mGravity != null && mGeomagnetic != null) {

            float[] rotationMatrixA = mRotationMatrixA;
            if (SensorManager.getRotationMatrix(rotationMatrixA, null, mGravity, mGeomagnetic)) {

                float[] rotationMatrixB = mRotationMatrixB;

                Display display = getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay(); 
                int deviceRot = display.getRotation();

                switch (deviceRot)
                {
                // portrait - normal
                case Surface.ROTATION_0: SensorManager.remapCoordinateSystem(rotationMatrixA,
                        SensorManager.AXIS_X, SensorManager.AXIS_Z,
                        rotationMatrixB);
                break;
                // rotated left (landscape - keys to bottom)
                case Surface.ROTATION_90: SensorManager.remapCoordinateSystem(rotationMatrixA,
                        SensorManager.AXIS_Z, SensorManager.AXIS_MINUS_X,
                        rotationMatrixB); 
                break;
                // upside down
                case Surface.ROTATION_180: SensorManager.remapCoordinateSystem(rotationMatrixA,
                        SensorManager.AXIS_X, SensorManager.AXIS_Z,
                        rotationMatrixB); 
                break;
                // rotated right
                case Surface.ROTATION_270: SensorManager.remapCoordinateSystem(rotationMatrixA,
                        SensorManager.AXIS_MINUS_Z, SensorManager.AXIS_X,
                        rotationMatrixB); 
                break;

                default:  break;
                }

                float[] dv = new float[3]; 
                SensorManager.getOrientation(rotationMatrixB, dv);
                // add to smoothing filter
                fd.AddLatest((double)dv[0]); 
            }
            mDraw.invalidate();     
        }
    }

Answer 1

Try this

public void onSensorChanged(SensorEvent event) {
    if (event.accuracy == SensorManager.SENSOR_STATUS_UNRELIABLE) {
        return;
    }

    if (event.sensor.getType() == Sensor.TYPE_ACCELEROMETER)  mGravity = event.values.clone ();
    if (event.sensor.getType() == Sensor.TYPE_MAGNETIC_FIELD) mGeomagnetic =  event.values.clone ();

    if (mGravity != null && mGeomagnetic != null) {

        float[] rotationMatrixA = mRotationMatrixA;
        if (SensorManager.getRotationMatrix(rotationMatrixA, null, mGravity, mGeomagnetic)) {

            float[] rotationMatrixB = mRotationMatrixB;
            SensorManager.remapCoordinateSystem(rotationMatrixA,
                    SensorManager.AXIS_X, SensorManager.AXIS_Z,
                    rotationMatrixB);
            float[] dv = new float[3]; 
            SensorManager.getOrientation(rotationMatrixB, dv);
            // add to smoothing filter
            fd.AddLatest((double)dv[0]); 
        }
        mDraw.invalidate();     
    }
}

You do not need the switch statement, there seems to be a lot of confusion concerning getRotationMatrix, remapCoordinateSystem and getOrientation from stackoverflow questions.
I probably will write a detail explanation of these in the near future.