A continuous measurement-while-drilling surveying apparatus includes a fiber optic gyroscope sensitive to rotation about the tool spin axis of the bottom hole assembly and a second fiber optic gyroscope sensitive to rotation of the bottom hole assembly about an axis normal to the tool spin axis. The lead frame is a patterned metal sheet and has a first surface, a second surface opposite thereto and a through trench passing from the first surface to the second surface. The barcode localization and decoding algorithm of the present invention employs a subpixel-accurate search algorithm which allows for estimating barcode bit values at a higher resolution than that available in the image data itself. The data corresponding to the selected content is then transmitted to the vehicle onboard apparatus, and the data is decoded on the vehicle onboard apparatus using a decoder that corresponds to the content medium. The transparent substrate includes conductive traces that electrically connect the sensor chip’s contact pads to the handler’s conductive elements, so that off-chip signaling is provided by the substrate’s conductive traces and the handler’s conductive elements. Two highly integrated semiconductor chips based on this control methodology are also described that require very few components to build a constant voltage flyback converter.