Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utilities | Free | Chrystian Vieyra | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
A menu allows the user to sense or generate the following (dependent upon the user’s mobile device capabilities):
SENSORS
(1) G-Force Meter - ratio of Fn/Fg (x, y, z and total)
(2) Linear Accelerometer – acceleration (x, y, and z)
(3) Gyroscope - radial velocity (x, y, and z)
(4) Barometer - atmospheric pressure
(5) Proximeter - periodic motion
(6) Magnetometer - magnetic field intensity (x, y, z and total)
(7) GPS - latitude, longitude
(8) Inclinometer - yaw, roll, pitch
(9) Color Detector - detects HEX colors within a small circular area on the screen via the camera.
(10) Tone Detector - frequency and musical tone
(11) Oscilloscope (audio) - wave shape
(12) Spectrum Analyzer (audio) - graphical FFT
GENERATORS
(13) Tone Generator – sound frequency producer
Reviews
A nice tool - but I have an improvement suggestion
cher-kash
Could you report separately GPS vertical and horizontal accuracies? On most devices they are available as separate numbers. Will be happy to update to 5 stars when done!
Very Useful for Education
jaghla
This app is very well done, and packs a lot of useful sensors and analysis into one nice package. The magnetic field AR is especially amazing! As a physics teacher, I have long struggled to help my students visualize magnetic fields, and get them to really understand that they are three-dimensional. This AR visualization makes that (very nearly) obvious! Looking forward to being able to export oscilloscope data in a future update. <hat tip> to the developers!
Useful and fun for learning
j_2112
A very thorough job using all sensors, nicely categorized. The AR tool is way cool, you can use it to make virtual 3d treasure maps with the kids. One feature request: the compass needs to show the actual decimal reading along with the analog dial, otherwise you’re making a needless estimation of heading (see the iphone built in compass app for comparison). So 1 star taken away for that, plus the audio waveform analyzer was crashing the app when i tried to use it. But overall this is the most useful app i found for general gps and orientation info.
Just the thing for “distance” teaching
The Higgs
I introduced this to my honors physics students today. Really looking forward to cooking up some labs for them to do at home. We just started the chapter on magnetic fields. Wish I would have had it for Newton’s Laws. I plan to update my review after field testing the app.
To export CSV you need the individual apps not the suite!
SeqJ
I downloaded the “suite” and was unable to export data. The 3d magnetic field visualization was cool, but I otherwise found the apps contained in the suite to be unuseful since there is no way to get the data out! So this is rudimentary compared to the individual apps for each purpose (search for “accelerometer” and “magnetometer” apps from the same developer.) The suite does NOT let you save and export csv data, while the individual apps do. Acceleration rate on my ipad is not sufficient to resolve harmonic oscillations (for a low frequency oscillation either the acceleration is too low or you are at or below the Nyquist rate.) But this isnt an app issue but rather a hardware limitation.
Barometric sensor faulty
Skeefiez
Tried using the barometer but I was then unable to access the settings, info icon or even back out to the main menu! Had to force-close ? iphone is on iOS 13.7
