I recently purchased and old camcorder from my local repair centre for £3.50 (5$) to rob the zoom lens out for a UAV project. Whilst recycling some of the bits from this old Canon, i spotted something that looked remotely familiar, i remembered seeing the same thing in a Walkera RC receiver with a Giro, so a little digging on the internet followed.

On a small PCB at the front of the camera were mounted two Murata Gyro modules, part number 03JB and 03JA and i managed to download the data sheet for them. These are analogue Gyro's intended for model applications amongst others. The next day i went back to the service depot to visit my friend, and another £3.50 later i came away with another Canon camcorder which had the same thing inside. Apparently, the vast majority of camcorders (and camera's) have these Gyro's built inside.

So i now have 4 Gyro's for pennies!

Anyone ever used these of have any comments?

John