Pedometer Project Freeze

We'll freeze development of the pedometer project. The G1's accelerometer sensor only does 4 to 7 reading per second. This means that it is possible to count steps for slow walking but not fast walking or running.

We will release the prototype code we have so far, but no Android Market application will be made based on it. If the sensor in future phones improves, we may come back to the project.

For the near future, one way we may get this to work is to create a standalone pedometer with bluetooth enabled so that we can access it from the phone and provide neat analysis tools. This is outside our expertise, but it would be a nice challenge for device engineerings out there.

Updated FitAndroid Beta

Android SDK keeps changing every few months, which is good because it usually brings better tools with it. But bad because it tends to break old code.
The testing Nutrition Diary has being released today updated with Android's new SDK (1.5). We hope to start bringing this open source project to the Android Market this summer.

The updated source package can be downloaded here.

Vectors of my walking

Based on empirical study. The G1 takes about 4 force measurements per second. I have notice that simply using the change in force that happens when one walks is not enough to get an accurate step reading. So, we've being working on using the sway in direction that happens when we walk in addition to the magnitude. We are using all 3 axis that are reported by the gravity sensor. This information is used to create vectors and are visualized with visual python. Below is a picture of me walking
The color code is to show how good the algorithm is at getting the steps counted. We are converting the algorithm from python to Java this week. Then we'll do more testing. The Android Activity will be available soon under GPL Licensing.