WeatherSignal – sensor toolkit

The app makes use of native phone sensors to display local atmospheric readings, which are then displayed on our live-updating weather map. By using WeatherSignal you are becoming a part of the most ambitious weather crowdsourcing project in the world – helping to record weather patterns on a more localised level than ever before.

Features:
* Readout for all the sensors on your device (think Tricorder – but real!)
* Widgets for temperature, magnetic, light, humidity and pressure sensors (if you have them)
* Save all data to CSV on your SD card – play with it however you like
* Map of readings of other users and of your own, see averages within each map window, click on icons to see full readout
* Manual reports
* Tonnes of graphs (for geeks like us :))
* Contribute to our maps (you can turn off sharing in settings)

*** This app is experimental! Readings from sensors may be faulty, we are developing ways of filtering and correcting this. In particular, individual TEMPERATURE readings may be incorrect, but when averaged over many users we get reliable information for our community powered maps. ***

Android phones are increasingly being equipped with a sophisticated array of sensors and the WeatherSignal app is designed to help you make use of them. What the app can display depends on what model of phone you have and how many sensors it has. The app works best on the Galaxy S4 (as that phone has the most sensors) but has functionality on most Android devices.

The WeatherSignal app can measure:
* Pressure (certain devices only)
* Temperature (see note below)
* Light Intensity
* Humidity (Galaxy S4 only)
* Magnetic Flux
* Acceleration (you’ll need to turn this on in the application settings)

You can see graphs of all these values live or over time.

This app is also one of the first to feature Google’s Activity Recognition: monitor when you’re walking, in vehicle, on a bicycle. You can save the results to CSV and perform your own analysis, for example for quantified self tracking

*** NOTE ON TEMPERATURE READINGS ***

We’ve come up with an algorithm that can translate battery temperature into ambient temperature. For each user this can sometimes be a bit approximate but we’ve discovered that there is a very strong correlation between battery and ambient temperature when spread over a crowd of users. If you are using a cell phone without an external thermometer then the temperature reading you’ll see is a battery temperature reading converted through our algorithm. Often the algorithm will get it wrong, however we’ve shown in a research project with meteorologists, that with appropriate averaging and filtering, these readings correlate extremely well with external ambient air temperature.

The Galaxy S4 which has an ambient air temperature may also produce incorrect readings – if the phone is hot (perhaps because it’s been in your pocket or has been charging or intensively used) then the readings will be higher than the ambient environmental air temperature.

*** PRESSURE ****

Devices that contain barometers include:

Galaxy Nexus
Galaxy S3
Galaxy S4
Galaxy Note
Galaxy Note II
Nexus 4
Nexus 10
Xoom
RAZR MAXX HD
Xiaomi MI-2

Units available:
millibars/hPa inches of mercury aka “Hg or inchees H
centigrade/celsius and Fahrenheit

You might also be searching for: lux meter, lightmeter, light meter, magnetometer, hygrometer, accelerometer, thermometer … if your phone has it, WeatherSignal reads it, graphs it, saves it.

(weather signal, opensignal, open signal)

THIS APPLICATION HAS ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING: