I'm developing an app that measures car's accelerations.
Instead of using the accelerometer, I have read about linear accelerometer and implemented it.
I have two devices to test, It's working fine on a Sony Xperia Z1 but I don't get any value on a old Alcatel onetouch.
Is it because of its android version (5.1 vs 4.2), because my code is wrong or is it a hardware limitation?
Taken from Android's documentation:
TYPE_LINEAR_ACCELERATION
Added in API level 9 int TYPE_LINEAR_ACCELERATION A constant describing a linear acceleration sensor type.
See SensorEvent.values for more details.
Constant Value: 10 (0x0000000a)
This means it should work on any device post API 9
Please take in consideration Lork's response in this post. It states which type of sensor you should use in order to measure certain types of movements.
Update: I'll add the information of Lork's response as it might help future readers:
TYPE_ACCELEROMETER uses the accelerometer and only the accelerometer. It returns raw accelerometer events, with minimal or no processing at all.
TYPE_GYROSCOPE (if present) uses the gyroscope and only the gyroscope. Like above, it returns raw events (angular speed un rad/s) with no processing at all (no offset / scale compensation).
TYPE_ORIENTATION is deprecated. It returns the orientation as yaw/ pitch/roll in degres. It's not very well defined and can only be relied upon when the device has no "roll". This sensor uses a combination of the accelerometer and the magnetometer. Marginally better results can be obtained using SensorManager's helpers. This sensor is heavily "processed".
TYPE_LINEAR_ACCELERATION, TYPE_GRAVITY, TYPE_ROTATION_VECTOR are "fused" sensors which return respectively the linear acceleration, gravity and rotation vector (a quaternion). It is not defined how these are implemented. On some devices they are implemented in h/w, on some devices they use the accelerometer + the magnetometer, on some other devices they use the gyro.
On Nexus S and Xoom, the gyroscope is currently NOT used. They behave as if there was no gyro available, like on Nexus One or Droid. We are planing to improve this situation in a future release.
Currently, the only way to take advantage of the gyro is to use TYPE_GYROSCOPE and integrate the output by hand.
I hope this helps,
Mathias
