Book Image

Android Sensor Programming By Example

By : Varun Nagpal
Book Image

Android Sensor Programming By Example

By: Varun Nagpal

Overview of this book

Android phones available in today’s market have a wide variety of powerful and highly precise sensors. Interesting applications can be built with them such as a local weather app using weather sensors, analyzing risky driving behavior using motion sensors, a fitness tracker using step-counter sensors, and so on. Sensors in external devices such as Android Watch, Body Analyzer & Weight Machine, Running Speed Cell, and so on can also be connected and used from your Android app running on your phone. Moving further, this book will provide the skills required to use sensors in your Android applications. It will walk you through all the fundamentals of sensors and will provide a thorough understanding of the Android Sensor Framework. You will also get to learn how to write code for the supportive infrastructure such as background services, scheduled and long running background threads, and databases for saving sensor data. Additionally, you will learn how to connect and use sensors in external devices from your Android app using the Google Fit platform. By the end of the book, you will be well versed in the use of Android sensors and programming to build interactive applications.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Android Sensor Programming By Example
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Understanding motion-based sensors


Motion sensors are responsible for measuring acceleration forces and rotational forces acting along three axes of the phone. Motion sensors include the accelerometer, the gyroscope, gravity, linear acceleration, signification motion, the step detector, and the step counter. The detailed list of motion sensors can be found in Chapter 1, Sensor Fundamentals. In the next section, we will be discussing these sensors individually in detail. We will cover the step detector and step counter in the next chapter.

The accelerometer sensor

The accelerometer sensor determines the acceleration along the xy, and z axes, which is applied to a phone by measuring the forces acting on the phone. The measured acceleration includes both the physical acceleration (change of velocity) and the static gravity acting on the phone all the time. Accelerometer sensors are made up of the Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS), which is an embedded system that integrates electronic...