Spirit Level Plus does exactly what it says on the tin. Place your phone on any surface and the digital spirit level will indicate whether the surface is level enough to meet your needs. The graphical bubble tubes look great, and the accuracy is impressive. Just make sure you calibrate as required and as the author says don’t rely on the app for anything really important, just in case.
This Electric Sleep app provides a fascinating example of the use of your phone’s accelerometer to measure your sleep patterns and give you an analysis of how well you slumber. It’s actually billed as a smart alarm, which wakes you at the optimum time, but we’re just as impressed with the sleep analysis. There’s not much there apart from a graph at the end of the night, but it’s enough to get a feel for how well or badly you did last night. There should be prizes for getting a high score (apart from not falling apart at work the next day).
You don’t often get the chance to use your phone’s gyroscope for anything serious, but this Sensor Mouse app gives you the chance in spades. The software lets you remotely control the mouse on your PC using nothing more than your home WiFi connection and the gyro and touchscreen on your phone. It’s simple and effective. Works with Windows and Mac computers, and you can also use it to control your media players and presentations. The interface is a little sparse, and it could with some instructions as well. But hey ho…
And just to tie it all together nicely, as The Dude would say, is AndroSensor. This app gives you more information about the multitude of sensors inside your Android phone than you could ever want to know. It covers literally everything from the multi-touch capabilities of your screen, to the distance over which your proximity sensor works. If you’re serious about learning more about the capabilities of your cell phone, this is the app you want to install.
Well that concludes our round up of this most excellent category of Android apps. Sensors are a miracle of technology and these apps are proof that where there’s a chip, there’s someone willing to exploit it to do wondrous things in the name of progress. It’s inevitable that as more and more sensors are embedded in these phones, we’ll see more exotic apps and more incredible functionality delivered to our pockets. One day your mobile phone could make Dr McCoy’s Tri-Corder look as old fashioned as a copper tea kettle.
Feel free to chime in with your own app examples in the comments.
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Hi Nigel, if you like you can add my light sensor app also in this article. It is being used by 300 active users rightnow. Here is the link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.lightsensor
Thanks