Android Sensors (The phone kind, not the cool robot kind)

March 25, 2014 4:32 AM

I'm doing some experiments with sensor feeds and sensing sensor data with MQTT and in the short term, before my sensors turn up I've managed to set up a sort of trial sensor using an MQTT app on my phone to send dummy data to Xively. This got me thinking about actual phone sensor data, so I downloaded an app called AndroSensor, which gives many and varied readings on sensors. What I am now wondering is, is there an easy way (short of writing my own app, which I may end up doing anyway) of taking regular readings from my phone sensors and sending or storing them. Preferably I'd like to send an MQTT message very 30 seconds or so, but failing that could I sample them every 30 seconds then auto send that file somehow?
posted by Just this guy, y'know to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You might be able to do something like that by using Tasker (in particular the list of variables includes sensor readings).
posted by Poldo at 5:52 AM on March 25, 2014

it's probably faster to write your own app ..

You'd probably spend more time downloading the SDK, Eclipse or Google's android IDE, than actually writing the code. The docs give you almost everything you need for cut/paste to do it yourself.
posted by k5.user at 6:43 AM on March 25, 2014

:) I just spent about 3 days downloading Eclipse and various SDKs and so on and now I don't have any free time to actually figure out how to use them.

If you have any good links that would help me put something basic together, that would useful.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:56 AM on March 25, 2014

Take a look at funf - this may do what you are after https://code.google.com/p/funf-open-sensing-framework/
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 8:52 AM on March 25, 2014

+1 for Tasker. I currently write a file every 10min with lat-lon-alt, speed. If I get an incoming call or make a call that is logged to the same file with the contact and/or number. I rename and move it nightly to a folder on the phone. I have not had time to figure out how to get it off the phone but I think that will be a combination of a drive-sync application and a web folder somewhere. I did it in Tasker because I could do it all on the phone, eventually it might be an app though.
posted by alfanut at 10:41 AM on March 25, 2014

There is also QPython and mosquito. I've not used them so I cannot positively say they would solve your problem but they might merit further research.
posted by Poldo at 12:05 PM on March 25, 2014