Constructing a Magnetometer using Hall Effect Probes

Three axis magnetometers are used across many areas of physics to measure magnetic fields, but each application has different specific needs for how the magnetometer should be configured. We designed a highly-customizable way to build a magnetometer using Hall effect probes. These probes output a voltage proportional to the perpendicular magnetic field through the sensor. We designed a custom circuit board to provide the probes with constant current, correct for ohmic offset voltage within the probes, and re-scale voltages to be read by LabVIEW software. The code we created reads in the scaled voltage values and converts them to magnetic field strengths. The applications we used this magnetometer for include mapping the magnetic field in the tracker region of the g-2 experiment and calibrating the applied field for a MOKE microscope used to characterize ferromagnetic materials.