OSTECS' Sensor Capabilities

This application is provided to accompany the OSTECS' Sensor Stats application which works with the Android Linear Acceleration meter sensor. Not all hand-sets have that device available hence this application is provided to find out if it is indeed available before downloading the OSTECS' Sensor Stats application.

This application also reports the System and Graphics capabilities in addition to reporting available sensors.

It finally allows one to measure the speed of the motion sensors which include:

Free-fall Acceleration Meter

Magnetometer

Linear Acceleration Meter

Gyroscope

Rotation Meter

Orientation Meter (obsolete)

Gravity Meter

The OSTECS' Sensor Stats application may be usefully installed only if the Linear Acceleration Meter is available on your device.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Use the Toolbar Menu on the upper left of the main activity screen to select any of: System Capabilities, Graphics Capability, Available Sensors or Sensor Speeds.

These are informational views except for the last one that lets you measure speeds by individual sensor or all together.

Device Capabilities screen reports:

The Processor Name,

Hardware vendor designation,

Number of Cores, and

Processor Speed in Mega Hertz.

Graphics Processor Unit Capabilities report:

Vendor Name,

Version of (OpenGL) Graphics Library,

Graphics Renderer, and

List of Graphics Library Extensions.

Available Motion Sensor screen reports:

System Device Name and Model, and

Device and Vendor for:

Acceleration Meter,

Magnetometer,

Linear Acceleration Meter,

Gyroscope,

Rotation Meter,

Orientation Meter, and

Gravity Sensor.

Measuring them altogether tends to report the fastest one for all, whereas measuring their speeds individually lets you identify the speed of each distinct sensor.

The radio buttons at the top allow you to set the sensor polling speed ('Sample Delay Interval' in Android terminology), with NORMAL, the slowest, UI, GAME successively faster, and FAST, the fastest supported speeds.

The sampling is started using the check-boxes on the left and stopped with the reset button at the bottom.

The measurement may be stopped once the delay interval reading stops changing by much (usually ±1 millisecond).

The fast setting occasionally reports a Zero owing to event/formatting error which may be corrected by re-measurement (sub-millisecond speeds reporting is not supported in this version). Missing sensors also show up as zero speed entries in the list.

New in Version 1.2: Provide read-out of sensor accuracy as reported by the sensor 'accuracy changed' event manager.

The Sensor API at this writing provides four levels of accuracy from LOW to HIGH. It also provides the error range for readings, and the Accuracy Changed event designates a level to the reported accuracy.

The semantics of the designation are not clear and this application merely reports what is provided by the sensor event manager.

Should there be any queries regarding the meaning of the designation, the user is kindly referred to the Android design team.

Some sensor manufacturers do not adhere to the level designations and report additional detail such as accuracy at range. Their meanings may be kindly requested from the manufacturer who appears in the Available Sensor listing.

This application reports the non-standard levels as 'out of band (OOB)' levels, again to be verified through the listed manufacturer.

The choice of terminology for accuracy levels is made by the Android design teams, and their use is made in a literal sense. It is not the intention of this application to impute any quality judgement over the accuracy readings.

Version 1.3 corrects the accuracy label 'BAD' to proper Android designation 'UNRELIABLE'.