Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite 4+

Functional

Useful app, lets you measure sensor values

Suggestions for future: show degrees for compass, allow toggling between magnetic north and true north, add ambient light sensor (might need to use private IOKit apis), add graph for sound intensity meter, and allow switching between bluetooth microphone, microphone near front facing camera, and microphone near charging port

I understand that you might not have time to implement these, but regardless, thank you for the great app!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the suggestions. The next update will show compass degrees. We are also working on having a setting for magnetic, and true north selection. Ambient light sensor is not possible, as using a private API would probably be against the app store policies.

Thank you for the suggestions regarding the audio input. We will definitively work on adding support for input selection.

Implement and improve privacy controls

This app has access to more sensor data than any other app. However, none of these privacy controls appear in the privacy menu of settings. Once you “give permission“ to this app it kind of doesn’t ask anymore. For every single asset which this app has access to, such as the gyroscope or the microphone or the camera or the magnetometer or any sensory input data, there should be a button in the settings menu for privacy that will allow us to control that. If I want to only allow the magnetometer, I should be able to disable everything else and only allow the magnetometer. If I want to only allow the gyroscope, I should be able to disable everything else and only allow the gyroscope. The sensor and usage data is also a very touchy issue in Apple settings all by itself, because they don’t really intend to give you privacy either. If you say yes, you could never take it back you can never undo it and then every app will be able to access this data. Our gyroscope and magnetometer should have the same amount of privacy protections as our gyroscope and magnetometer. I should be able to totally throttle all sensory input access to this app as well as any app. Including and especially the sensor suite.

To export CSV you need the individual apps not the suite!

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.

Developer Response ,

The suite app allows you to export .csv data just like the individual apps.a