About this app

OSTECS' Kinematics application is the original working tool for testing acceleration meter sensors on smart phones. It will first try to work with the so-called Linear Acceleration meter from whose readings the force of gravity has been subtracted out, and in the absence of a Linear acceleration sensor, it will interact with the free fall Acceleration meter that includes acceleration due to gravity.

The main usefulness of this Kinematics application is the ability to extract and export the sensor readings to the smartphone file system for further analysis. If the smartphone has a mounted external SD card and the version of the system ROM recognizes and has exposed it to the application environment, then the Kinematics application will export the readings onto that external SD card.

If that is not possible on the host smartphone platform then Kinematics shall export the readings onto the internal storage of the smartphone. In either case the user shall need to create a predetermined folder named 'apdat' to receive the files which contain the readings.

The onus of creating the folder is deliberately left to the user to ensure he or she knows where to find the emitted sensor data files. If all the above as been done and there are no files after following the procedure below, for more recent versions of Android, please check settings=>permissions=>storage for the App Kinematics, and set its permission from OFF to ON.

For safety, create a folder of that name in the internal and external storage locations where applicable. Start the application. It begins on the run. stop the run with the pause button, turn on the Record checkbox, press the rewind if you want the record to begin with event No. 1, hold the device in the manner you wish to record its sensors in and resume the run with the play button at UI sync speed (15-16 frames per second) or fast forward button at the device's fastest data acquisition rate.

Move the device around as per your measurement needs and stop the recording by successively pressing the pause then checkbox to turn off recording.

Make sure you also note the tick size in milliseconds for the run in question as you may need it to convert ticks to time. This appears on the top far right of the main panel.

Come out of the app and browse the 'apdat' folder and you shall find the data file named according to the type of statistical stream RW for Raw, MA for Moving Average and ES for Exponentially Smoothed followed by the first Event Count Number in the file, and followed finally by the Acquisition rate NORM for Normal, UINT for User Interface Sync rate, FAST for the Fastest. So for example a file may be named:

RW205UINT.txt

to indicate it contains raw sensor values, beginning on event number (tick count) 205 in the sequence at User Interface Synced speed (15-16 frames/sec).

Should one need to convert the tick count to time units refer back to the text screen that displays the tick size in milliseconds. So one would multiply the tick size by the tick count to obtain time in milliseconds.

New features

Display sensor values in text for raw values (red), moving averages(blue) and exponentially smoothed(green) values, and export them to external files. Each stream type has color coded buttons as indicated.
Provided is a pause and rewind button, as well as resume buttons for two speeds, UI synced at 15 frames per second and Fastest (device dependent).
Camera icon button time series (X,Y,Z) and 2D projections (XY, YZ, ZX) graphs, all color coded.
Provide motion spectrum for raw time series data.