This app is a simple Tricorder for Android, using your phone’s real sensors to detect magnetic fields, gravity and a few other cool things. All you fans of Star Trek has made this one of the most popular apps on Android with an estimated 150,000 downloads.


The following was taken from MoonBlink, the creator of the app, project hosting page:

Features

* Runs on Android 1.6 and later. (People with 1.5 phones can continue to use version 3.10, available in the Downloads section.)
* Portrait and landscape modes are handled.
* Displays gravitation and magnetic field, environmental and geographic information, based on information from the sensors in the device.
* Runs on QVGA, HVGA and WVGA displays, in landscape and portrait modes. On real hardware, it has been tested on the T-Mobile G1, Google ION / HTC Magic, HTC Tattoo, Motorola Droid, and HTC Nexus One, with some testing on the Hero (not the Sprint one), and LG.

Accuracy is limited to what the sensors can provide. In particular the magnetic field sensor on the G1 phone seems to be pretty erratic, though it sometimes works quite well; on the Droid, it seems to have some pretty serious issues. This will affect both the MAG tab and the compass in the GEO tab.

How to Use

Use the buttons on the left to select the mode:

* GRAV: monitor the local gravitational field and acceleration
* MAG: monitor the local magnetic field
* ACO: acoustic analysis; waveform, frequency and sound level analysis of the ambient sound
* GEO: display geographical information (enable GPS for full info)
* EMS: scan the electromagnetic spectrum for radio signals — currently displays cellular and WiFi signals (you have to enable the WiFi to get the latter)
* SOL: display current solar activity data — downloads current solar data in the background (may take a while) and displays it along with current images

The gravitational and magnetic field displays show the corresponding field information as a 3-D plot with X and Y on a cross-axis plot, with the Z value shown beside it. The elevation of the field above or below the X-Y plane is shown on a separate indicator. The absolute magnitude of the field value is plotted below, and the numeric data is shown below that.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.