PyTeapot-Quaternion-Euler-cube-rotation

Introduction

Visualization of rotating cube as per quaternion or Euler angles (strictly speaking, the Tait Bryan Angles) data received over the serial port from any IMU using OpenGL in Python. The MPU-9250 (has on-board accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope) has been used with Arduino in this case:

This is an easy to understand Python implementation of the often-used 'MPU Teapot' processing code for the same purpose, but not specific to any particular IMU. PyGame and OpenGL are used for graphics, PySerial is used to get data from serial port.

Usage

Most of the code is self-explanatory. However some modifications might be required as per different use cases:

• Set serial port by changing the variable ser.
• Set useQuat to True if receiving quaternions over serial and False if receiving Euler angles.
• If receiving quaternions over serial, the declination at the particular location should to be updated in quat_to_ypr(q) function to get correct yaw angles printed on screen. (The cube rotation is not dependent on this and will still work fine otherwise)

String passed over Serial

To use this module, the data received over serial port should be in the format specified below:

• First quaternion value should be between two 'w' s
• Second quaternion value should be between two 'a' s
• Third quaternion value should be between two 'b' s
• Fourth quaternion value should be between two 'c' s
• Yaw angle should be betweem two 'y' s
• Pitch angle should be between two 'p' s
• Roll angles should be between two 'r' s

Either quaternion or Euler angles or even both can be received over the serial port. If both are received, the useQuat variable defines which one is used to rotate the cube. So for example, all of the following are valid formats for the data received over the serial port:

# Both quaternions and Euler angles
w0.09wa-0.12ab-0.09bc0.98cy168.8099yp12.7914pr-11.8401r

# Quaternions only
w0.09wa-0.12ab-0.09bc0.98c

# Euler angles only
y168.8099yp12.7914pr-11.8401r

Each of these must be on separate lines (or should have a '\n' at the end of the string). Other data may also be passed over Serial, provided that none of the characters w, a, b, c, y, p, r are passed (for example, somethingw0.09wa-0.12ab-0.09bc0.98cy168.8099yp12.7914pr-11.8401rsomethingelse is valid but somedataw0.09wa-0.12ab-0.09bc0.98cy168.8099yp12.7914pr-11.8401ranotherstring is not since it has the characters 'a' and 'r')