acceleration

[vincen...@gmail.com]

Hello

Is it possible to have the acceleration given on the three axis separatly, and not one absolute value ?

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

No, not currently. I don't think it would be that useful since you wouldn't know the orientation of the device, i.e. the true direction of acceleration.

[vincen...@gmail.com]

The problem is the following: as the acceleration given by automate is always positive, we cannot integrate it to have a speed or a position, because it would grow to infinite (there is always a positive noise in acceleration). I think it would be useful, because we already know the device orientation.

Thanks anyway

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

I'm no physics expert, but there's no such thing as negative acceleration. Deacceleration is just acceleration in the opposite direction.

Can you give a use-case for such a block?

[vincen...@gmail.com]

This could be used for several things:

- To know the speed and/or position of the device without GPS (inside a building for example) by integrating acceleration over time.

- If the sensors are enough accurate, to measure the size of a room or the height of a wall.

- For activity monitoring (walked distance, steps count...)

- For fun :)

There is an app on the play store (accelerometer meter) which records the acceleration on the three axis (positive or negative).

By the way, this is how missiles and planes are calculating their speed (Inertial Navigation System)

Thanks for your great support

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Cool features indeed, but i think each would require a highly specialized algorithm with integrating readings from multiple sensors, that would require customized blocks for each to get accurate timing. And the the issue of orientation still remain.

A pedometer block is coming in the next release.