Monthly Archives: September 2011

In an earlier article, we discussed that sensors and sensor subsystem architecture can be a major source of fragmentation that would continue to frustrate app developers for smart phone and mobile devices. As the industry embarks on creating a new class of situation aware mobile devices, it is key to establish and improve sensor system standards. For example, the Khronos Group through its StreamInput working group has identified “system-wide sensor synchronization for advanced multi-sensor applications” as an area in which standards is lacking. Indeed, for an application to, say, use inertial sensors to track camera angles it is necessary for the accelerometer, magnetometer, and image sensors to share the same timing reference. Each sensor, today, runs on its own free-running clock … Continue reading →

We receive many recurring questions from Android developers. This is a series of articles to help with clarification.   Developers often ask for clarification with respect to the list of sensor types list in Android documentation (see below). The list can be confusing because it includes both physical sensors and sensor types with values derived from physical sensors, sometimes these are called virtual sensors. Physical sensors include the accelerometer, gyroscope, light sensor, magnet field sensor (often called magnetometer), pressure sensor, proximity sensor, and temperature sensor. The values from these sensors are provided by hardware components directly measuring changes in the physical property of their environment. The quality of data from these sensor types depends fundamentally on the accuracy, resolution, inherent … Continue reading →