Patent ID: 7535215

Claim:
An apparatus for the determination of a momentary relative direction or velocity of an indicator object depending on a magnetic field influenced or generated by the indicator object, comprising: a first sensor for providing a first evaluation signal based on sensing a course of a first magnetic field component of the magnetic field sensed in a first sensing plane; a second sensor for providing a second evaluation signal based on sensing a course of a second magnetic field component of the magnetic field sensed in a second sensing plane, wherein the first and second sensors are arranged adjacent to each other; and an evaluator for evaluating the course of the first evaluation signal magnetic field component and the second evaluation signal magnetic field component in order to determine the momentary, relative direction and the velocity of movement of the indicator object, the first sensing plane for the first magnetic field component and the second sensing plane for the second magnetic field component being offset in angle with respect to each other, wherein the evaluator is configured to determine a reversal point of one of the first and second evaluation signals, a slope at the reversal point of the one evaluation signal, and a momentary value or the sign of the respective other evaluation signal when the reversal point is determined.