App Profile: Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite

astroclubguy

Rating: 5/5

I taught physics for 30 years and wish this tool had been around back then (the phones too of course). I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and the software says it doesn’t detect a proximity sensor. Of course the phone has one and it’s functioning properly so I think there’s a bug in detecting the sensor’s presence. Other than that, I feel this is an essential tool for the introductory physics curriculum. UPDATE: Proximity sensor detection is working in the latest update! Thank you!

zzz97

Rating: 2/5

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.

SeqJ

Rating: 3/5

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.