Thanks to Black and Decker for sending in this Gyro Screwdriver for review, you can see the review here. In this article we are going to tear into it and see what we have on the inside. Opening the unit was very simple since there are just 5 phillips screws holding the unit together, unfortunately the screws come in 2 different sizes (these go into the handle of the screwdriver). You will definitely visibly void your warranty by cracking it open since you need to cut through the sticker at the bottom of the screwdriver. The battery and circuit board are press fit into one half of the housing and all connection on the PCB have are connectorized which is quite nice. Looks like they wanted to keep it as modular as possible so they could service it easily. The microcontroller is an Atmel XMEGA16D4, it has 16K of flash and 34 IO pins. The position sensing is done with an Invernsense ISZ-650, this is a dual axis gyroscope. The 4 devices at the bottom of the rear of the board by the battery jack turned out to be 4899NF Power Mosfets, since there are 4 of them I am thinking that they are configured as an H-Bridge to run the motor.
I think this device would make for a great remote operated motor for some DIY projects like a wire winder. You could mount the motor to the winding drum and mount the drill to anything. I am thinking one of those old ship speed controls.
Click here to see the review of the Black and Decker Gyro Screwdriver. For full sized images please see them here.
