Patent attributes
A system and method indicate the direction faced by an operator. A waterproof housing has a mounting mechanism to engage a part of a headgear worn by an operator to position the housing in a portion of the operator's forward field of view. A two-axis gimbal mechanism is inside the waterproof housing and has a protective housing connected to the waterproof housing. The protective housing contains ring structure coupled to two orthogonal axis structures. A magnetic field sensor module is mounted on one of the axis structures and provides magnetic field data signals representative of the direction faced by the operator. An optical element has a wide field of view to transmit compass data images representative of the magnetic field data signals to the eyes of the operator.