Here is an example on how to use the accelerometer in your Android application. If you want to simulate the acceleration on the emulator I highly recommend the Sensor Simulator on the OpenIntents website.

The following example app displays the coordinates received by the sensor.

The app

• The activity – AccelerationActivity.java

  package com.hascode.android;
   
  import android.app.Activity;
  import android.content.Context;
  import android.hardware.Sensor;
  import android.hardware.SensorEvent;
  import android.hardware.SensorEventListener;
  import android.hardware.SensorManager;
  import android.os.Bundle;
  import android.widget.TextView;
   
  public class AccellerationActivity extends Activity {
  	private TextView result;
  	private SensorManager sensorManager;
  	private Sensor sensor;
  	private float x, y, z;
   
  	@Override
  	public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  		super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  		setContentView(R.layout.main);
   
  		sensorManager = (SensorManager) getSystemService(Context.SENSOR_SERVICE);
  		sensor = sensorManager.getSensorList(Sensor.TYPE_ACCELEROMETER).get(0);
   
  		result = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.result);
  		result.setText("No result yet");
  	}
   
  	private void refreshDisplay() {
  		String output = String
  				.format("x is: %f / y is: %f / z is: %f", x, y, z);
  		result.setText(output);
  	}
   
  	@Override
  	protected void onResume() {
  		super.onResume();
  		sensorManager.registerListener(accelerationListener, sensor,
  				SensorManager.SENSOR_DELAY_GAME);
  	}
   
  	@Override
  	protected void onStop() {
  		sensorManager.unregisterListener(accelerationListener);
  		super.onStop();
  	}
   
  	private SensorEventListener accelerationListener = new SensorEventListener() {
  		@Override
  		public void onAccuracyChanged(Sensor sensor, int acc) {
  		}
   
  		@Override
  		public void onSensorChanged(SensorEvent event) {
  			x = event.values[0];
  			y = event.values[1];
  			z = event.values[2];
  			refreshDisplay();
  		}
   
  	};
  }

• A simple layout defined in the main.xml

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      android:orientation="vertical"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="fill_parent"
      >
  <TextView
  	android:id="@+id/result"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:text=""
      />
  </LinearLayout>

• The strings.xml

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <resources>
      <string name="hello">Hello World, AccellerationActivity!</string>
      <string name="app_name">Accelerometer Snippet</string>
  </resources>

Google App Inventor

*update* If you like to see if this application is developed using Google’s App Inventor then take a look at the article “How to create an Android App using Google’s App Inventor”

Links

• Android Sensor API
• OpenIntents: Sensor Simulator
• Stuffthathappens.com: Android Accelerometer
• IBM.com: Tapping into Android’s Sensors

Tags: accelerometer, Android, Api, sensor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Android, Snippet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.