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Comment on ELI5: how do mobile devices know your movements?

It has three sensors that notice if it is changing speed up/down, left/right or back/forth.

A step will result in a speed increase up (foot go from still to up), followed by a sharp speed increase down (foot go from up to down), then “up” again (foot go from down to stop).

Going up a stair causes the same but different timing between the speed changes.

If you are on Android, the Physics Toolbox Suite can let you look at the exact values it is measuring.

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Slovene@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Foot go up, foot go down. You can’t explain that!

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- Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  fucking feet, how do they work?
  
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- suction@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You don’t have to!
  
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moody@lemmings.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In addition to that, it uses GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth signals to pinpoint your location very precisely, and can use that to calculate the distances you travel and the number of steps it takes you to get there.

It can also put all of these data points together to tell things like your height and weight. It can only guesstimate things like your heart rate based on your age and BMI, but smartwatches these days have actual heart rate monitors, and pulse and oxygen meters built-in and can share that data with your phone.

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meco03211@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Well how about that. I’ve debated making my own pedometer app. I’m assuming there are tutorials online how to do that, but this might be fun to just play with for a bit.

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