DeviGyro notes, 30 July 2020

CONTENTS
1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 2
2 Battery................................................................................................................................................... 2
2.1 Lithium primary ............................................................................................................................. 2
2.2 Survey time ................................................................................................................................... 2
2.3 Quantity of batteries ..................................................................................................................... 2
3 Memory................................................................................................................................................. 3
3.1 Survey time ................................................................................................................................... 3
4 Vertical surveys ..................................................................................................................................... 3
5 Survey procedure .................................................................................................................................. 4
5.1 Magnet .......................................................................................................................................... 4
5.2 Latitude input ................................................................................................................................ 4
5.3 Rotating the gyro, scale factor error ............................................................................................. 4
5.4 Oscillation filter ............................................................................................................................. 5
1 INTRODUCTION
The DeviGyro was officially introduced to the market in late 2019. It is a standard type of reference gyro,
of which there have been a number on the market for over a decade. After several months of use
various issues and features of the DeviGyro have become apparent and the most notable are
summarized here:

• The system calibration is poor, leading to the recommendation to rotate the tool during
surveying. This leads to excessive scale factor error in results and also the need for an ad-hoc
“oscillation filter” to try and remove the gross effect of the rotation on the poorly aligned gyro.
• The small amount of memory means the survey time is highly limited compared to standard
memory reference gyros.
• The primary lithium battery has problems with survey time, quantity of batteries needed,
transport and disposal.
• Vertical survey procedures are cumbersome and error prone.
• Latitude input for a reference gyro points to legacy effects from previous failed DeviGyro
incarnations.

2 BATTERY

2.1 LITHIUM PRIMARY

The DeviGyro uses a primary lithium CR123A battery, unlike most other gyros which use rechargeable
NiMH batteries. Transport of lithium batteries in any quantity falls under dangerous goods transport
considerations and needs qualified personnel to arrange shipments. The CR123A primary cells are not
rechargeable and a natural question is what happens if a gyro user is not near a sales point and cannot
operate the gyro? Lithium cells also have strict disposal issues.

See document: DeviGyro-Flyer_october2019.pdf

2.2 SURVEY TIME

Specification states 24 survey time. Reports from Australia state that often a battery will not last for one
survey, but it is not predictable. Therefore, a new battery is used before every survey.

See document: DeviGyro-Flyer_october2019.pdf

2.3 QUANTITY OF BATTERIES

The battery is often changed between surveys regardless of depth to avoid failure. Rental customers are
supplied with a box containing literally dozens of batteries.

Reference: DeviGyro rental users

3 MEMORY

3.1 SURVEY TIME

The type of memory used in the tool mean that is has a maximum operation time (not survey time)
limited to 6 hours and 40 minutes. This is a short time given the large amount of memory that can be
placed in modern devices and indicates that the memory in the tool consists of only a few megabytes
located within the microprocessor. The short time means that surveys will be problematic or impossible
for:

• Deep surveys
• Surveys where gyro must be started and wait for a long period before surveying
• Oil & gas drop gyro surveys
• Surveys where waiting at bottom of the hole for hours is needed
• Surveys where there is a risk of delay while in hole

See document: DeviGyro-Flyer_october2019.pdf

4 VERTICAL SURVEYS
The only way of doing a vertical or near vertical survey is to use a method like the old GyroSmart
“direction transfer”. This involves lying the tool horizontally in v-blocks, such that the tool points in a
defined reference direction. A reference mark is taken in this position and then the tool is lifted to the
hole collar for surveying.

There are problems with this method which make it error prone. The tool must be moved carefully from
the v-blocks to the hole collar to avoid high rates. Devico’s own procedure states that the tool should
not exceed rates of 80 deg/s in moving to the collar, which is a very low rate easily exceeded when
moving the tool by hand. Errors in this type of procedure can easily be on the order of a few degrees.

Another potential issue is that it is not clear if it is possible to do vertical orientation as there is no part
of the procedure for ensuring an oriented highside to later reference the toolface.

See document: GEO-DeviGyro-Procedure.pdf

5 SURVEY PROCEDURE

5.1 MAGNET
Like other Devico survey tools, the DeviGyro is started using an external magnet held over the tool. This
introduces one more piece of equipment to the kit. The magnet itself is not large and the question
arises, what happens if the magnet is lost or misplaced? Can the gyro be started in the field if a magnet
is not available? Other gyro systems typically start communicating once the power is connected.
Presumably, the low battery capacity of the DeviGyro rules this out, in case too much time is taken in
starting the gyro before actual surveying takes place.

5.2 LATITUDE INPUT

The latitude of the survey should be input at the start of the survey. There is no apparent reason to do
this for a reference gyro. This is probably an indication of a remnant of the processing used in the
original DeviGyro which was a re-branded Icefield Gyro that never made it to market, or the later failed
attempt to build a gyro for release around 2015. It is not currently known what the effect is of entering
an incorrect latitude, or omitting it altogether.

See video: DevGyro - Training Series 2019.mp4

See document: Original DeviGyro 2010.pdf

See document: CDDA DeviGyro 2015.pdf

5.3 ROTATING THE GYRO, SCALE FACTOR ERROR

The recommended procedure for surveying with the DeviGyro is to cause the gyro to constantly rotate
as it surveys in the hole. Special centralizers, derived from similar operation of the DeviFlex, are supplied
for this purpose.

Deliberately causing large rotations of the gyro instrument is discouraged by most manufacturers as it
introduces unavoidable scale factor error in the results. No information about the typical scale factor
error of the DeviGyro is available but it can be assumed to be on the order of 0.1% or more in downhole
situations. The recommended turn rate is about 120 deg per 3 meters of survey. For just a 100 meter
survey would then ideally rotate the gyro 4000 deg during the survey, introducing an error of 4 deg or
more from SFE.

The only reason to induce rotations during the survey is to try and eliminate problems from a poor
system calibration. A poor system calibration means that the rotation axes of the gyro component are
not well-aligned with tool itself and measure slightly incorrect rotations along each axis. This usually
expresses itself in poor results and “spiralling” of the azimuth and inclination angles.

This clearly is a pronounced and remarkable effect in the DeviGyro, as a special post-processing filter has
been introduced to try and deal with the effects of the poor system calibration and deliberate rotation,
see the next section “Oscillation filter”.

See document: Geo-DeviGyro-Intro.pdf

5.4 OSCILLATION FILTER
Because the DeviGyro has an apparently poor system calibration, so that it does not accurately measure
rotations correctly aligned about the system axes, the procedure recommends constantly rotating the
gyro as it surveys. Apart from introducing significant scale factor error probably on the order of degrees,
this also leads to the azimuth and inclination results swinging backwards and forwards during the
survey. For instance, see the left-hand plot below, taken from the Devico test hole. In an effort to
remove the swinging in the angles a so-called “oscillation filter” has been introduced. This appears to
run a smoothing filter over the results. It does remove some of the swings however it is a very blunt
remedy to a problem that should be corrected with a proper calibration. There are other issues with
doing this:

• There are clearly some swings left, as seen in the right-hand plot below. A smoothing filter
cannot fully remove all effects.
• The azimuth blows out at the end of the survey in the “in” run.
• Note that the unfiltered “out” run had a large error in azimuth at the collar, probably due to
misalignment cause by the poor system calibration.
• The filter does not know which effects are “swings” and which are actually features of the hole,
so it will inevitable smooth out features of the hole.

See video: oscillation filter.mp4