HMC5883L detect a 24 inch (0.6m) x 1 inch (2.5 cm) steel bar?

Other Hardware Sensors
1

I am trying to see how far out a HMC5883L can detect a bar of steel. If anyone has experience using this sensor (or a better one for this task??). Please let me know.

All I want to do is Yes/no if this bar comes near the sensor. I need to know the max range this sensor can detect it.

The bar is moving at about 3MPH (1.3 MPS) in the air and there is no other metal near it.

If someone has done something similar with a different sensor or different way please let me know.

Thank you in advance.

2

Do the experiment and let us know!

3

Is the bar soft or hard magnetically? If hard is it pre-magnetized?

In rough terms all magnetic effects tail off as one over the cube of distance (holds for any dipole in an
inverse-square-law field, so as there aren't any magnetic monopoles, forces go with 1/r^3).

This means all magnetic phenomena are short-range (limited to a small number of multiples of the size
of the biggest magnet present)