Measure rotation angles with your android device! Gyroscope Explorer uses a accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope sensor to estimate the rotation of your device. You can even visualize the output with awesome gauges!
Caveat Emptor: The quality of the drift compensations on the gyroscope sensor vary considerably among devices. This application was developed on the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 7. These devices do a reasonable job of compensating for drift, but will eventually drift out of rotation with the device. Other devices, such as the Samsung GS4 and Motorola MotoX, do a fairly terrible job of drift compensation.
For an application that will *reliably* estimate the rotation angles of the device, try Fused Gyroscope Explorer which uses a fusion of the acceleration, magnetic and gyroscope sensors via complementary filter to determine the rotation of the device.
Gyroscopes measure the rotation of a device with a pair of vibrating arms that take advantage of what is known as the Coriolis effect, which is caused by the Earth's rotation. By measuring changes in the direction of the vibrating arms caused by a rotation and the Coriolis effect, an estimation of the rotation can be produced. The gyroscope is one of three sensors that are always hardware based (the other two are the magnetic and the acceleration sensors) on Android devices. In conjunction with the acceleration sensor, the gyroscope can be used to create other sensors like gravity, linear acceleration or rotation sensors. Note that not all devices have a gyroscope sensor and you device will need one to run Gyroscope Explorer!
If your device is equipped with Android 4.3 or higher, you even get the uncalibrated version of the gyroscope so you can see how drift affects the gyroscope sensor relative to the calibrated gyroscope.
What would you want to measure rotation angle of? Lots of freaking amazing stuff.
For example, you can measure the rotation angle of (not recommended):
• Your house to prove to the contractor is really is titled
• Your car driving around a corner on two wheels
• Your mountain bike going up a hill faster than your buddies
• Your angle on the ski slope no one else would take with you
• Your plane diving towards the ground
• Your picture frame that just won't get level
• Your R/C truck flying through the air
• Your rockets for your science fair project
Totally impress your friends with all these cool features!
Yup, you can make your phone at least 10 times more amazing (rough estimate) by downloading Gyroscope Explorer and then measuring the linear acceleration of you doing something super sweet.