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Barometers In iPhones Mean More Crowdsourcing In Weather Forecasts
cryptoz (878581) writes Apple is now adding barometers to its mobile devices: both new iPhones have valuable atmospheric pressure sensors being used for HealthKit (step counting). Since many Android devices have been carrying barometers for years, scientists like Cliff Mass have been using the sensor data to improve weather forecasts. Open source data collection projects like PressureNet on Android automatically collect and send the atmospheric sensor data to researchers.
Is this a suprise? I felt like this is a pretty obvious one. I mean, a newsworthy article would be that Apple would then use this data to induce mass climate change and natural disasters where there is a low density of Apple users to increase their market share.
I read the lead in three times, each time reading HeaLthKit as HeathKit. I must be officailly an old fart...
Apples reality distortion field. Remember, its not useful until apple does it, and then once apple does it, it becomes innovation.
Quick, everybody leave your phone in the car for an hour. For science.
If it is open source (and a cursory look around the web site didn't show me any links to the source), it's a shame that it isn't in F-Droid.
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I know what they're going through. I had my last apple years ago. These days, when I find one, I toss it back over the fence.
to implement the anal probe functionality. I know the idea is rather old at this point. Clearly the populace is not vocally butt-hurt enough just yet about the lack of privacy, or maybe they are and we just need the data about their sphincter tightness... in the cloud aggregate database gathered by the APF module.
Yay! We can finally all figure out what the average weather inside teenagers pockets is! Woot!
Hmm. For work I spend the majority of my time at an approximate cabin altitude of 5,000 to 7,000 feet. I guess my data won't be very meaningful.
"Innovation" mostly has to do with getting people to buy or use something -- actually being the first person to invent or market the thing doesn't really carry any intrinsic benefit, follow-through and execution always trump good ideas. Ideas are cheap.
--- Signed, Ignaz Semmelweiss, Elija Gray, the Lumiere Brothers, Preston Tucker, Douglas Engelbart, Xerox PARC, inter alia
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Remember Barometers In iPhones.. that's iPhones.. remember Barometers In iPhones.... Smallprint: oh yeah, Android had them for years
If you get the chance to monitor the barometer at high frequency there are a couple neat atmospheric phenomena which you can observe.
The shockwaves which preceed an oncoming strong front or thunderstorm are especially cool to watch.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Quick, everybody leave your phone in the car for an hour. For science.
And then what? Drive up and down a mountain? Drive into a mine shaft?
You do understand the term 'barometer', do you not?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I know my android device has a barometer, but I can't seem to figure out why. Sure it's kind of neat to be able to see the pressure graphed over time, but I don't think it's a big selling point on devices. Is it just a side effect of some other hardware that makes it easy to implement or something?
Every time I feel a small breeze or change in air pressure or a bit of a temperature change I feel also tracked ... somehow is behind me ... I'm sure! I can feel it!
Or is it just my developing proximity sense?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, it and of itself won't be meaningful. That's the crowdsource bit.
OK, for all of you that stare at the weatherperson and wonder what the funny lines are for: The column of air just above your head and extending to the top of the atmosphere has a mass that depends on a number of details. This fluctuates from minute to minute and, in fact, occurs in waves (those funny lines). Detailed information about the barometric pressure at any given location and time can be sent to a central station where that data is collected and displayed. The more (accurate) sensors that you have, the better detail and, presumably, the better quality of weather (not climate) forecasting.
Having lots of barometric pressure measurements attached to a device that can accurately determine location and time can be a useful source of data. For the National Weather Service, the National Security Agency and other fun TLAs. The utility for the weather service is obvious, for the NSA not so much but I believe it has to do with overall conductivity of aluminum foil, or something along those lines.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I understand most of the other guys, but who is 'Inter Alia"?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Her brother is the Kwisatz Haderach...
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Now with even less privacy!!!
They can already triangulate you anyway based off cell tower data, along with any number of phone-home apps that you joyfully agreed to the EULA.
Even I'm not seeing a privacy correlation between barometric pressure and YOU (adjusts tin-foil hat)
Now they can tell how high you are.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This has been in some Windows Phone since the Lumia 1020. Apple isn't first ever.
so since they have an accelerometer, gyro, compass (orientation), GPS (position), and now even barometer and temperature sensor (reasonably accurate altitude w/ high update rate), all they're missing is a few PWM outputs to directly fly a plane, helicopter, or multirotor as a full-blown auto pilot. I know it's peanuts to interface an MCU with an android phone over UART over USB, but i'm guessing it is also possible on iShizzle, be it over some proprietary interface as opposed to plain old TTL UART. Let's see how long it takes before the first iPhone "drone" kits arrive in the store.
Which technology would that be? Definitely not processor technology.
The distortion field is strong in you young padawan.
No shit. I already have an accurate three day forcast for the home and office. Its called a thermostat and airconditioning.
What would be nice is a weekend forecast that would say something different than chance of drunkeness, loud music, and women laughing when you ask them to go home with you. Maybe something like dude, she's a he or crowded- stay home and drink or similar. Of course i'm not sure how a barometer would forcast the mangirl problem. Perhaps i should jusr checkand see if my glasses need updating.
One of the things Apple is using the barometer for is to determine what floor you may be in within a building.
It could be that with central heating/cooling in most buildings running almost all the time, perhaps a barometric reading could be constant between floors from day to day, even as weather changed...
Or perhaps just using the change along with accelerometer data to detect shifting between floors.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My Verizon Galaxy Nexus phone which is almost three years old has barometer support, NFC, etc. Apple is nothing more than re-packaged yesterdays technology.
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Our lab rooms have negative internal pressure with respect to the halls on account of fume hoods, etc. Wonder if a phone barometer gets confused by that?
I wonder how long it will take someone to turn this into a secondary (and insecure) microphone. It's already been done with Android's gyroscope.
Now that they have a barometer... just need to add air motion sensors, a humidity sensor, a thermometer, vibration sensor, UV sensor, and an air quality sensor / airborn particles measurement, Oh yeah, and an Ebola/Microbe detector
No, it and of itself won't be meaningful. That's the crowdsource bit.
None of us are as dumb as all of us.
Trying to crowd source weather prediction will only result in wildly inaccurate predictions. Many smartphone users work in a climate controlled office... travel there in a climate controlled car from their climate controlled home. So the 5-10 minutes they spend outside wont provide enough data especially if it doesn't have accurate location and elevation data.
So actual meteorologists will continue to be more reliable than this crowdsoruced application.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I know several people who get barometric migraines, or migraine headaches that are triggered when the pressure changes suddenly (usually when it drops). Some of them have told me that migraine medications like rizatriptan and sumatriptan can be effective, but often come with unpleasant side-effects like a racing pulse or grogginess.
This leads to a dilemma: do you take the medication and deal with the side effects, or do you try to ride out the headache? It's especially frustrating for people who get headaches that aren't always migraines, because the migraine medication doesn't necessarily work on a normal, non-migraine headache.
This is where a personal barometric pressure monitor that's been with you for the last few hours can be very helpful. If you are trying to decide whether or not to take migraine medication, you can consult your phone and see if you personally experienced a large pressure drop prior to the onset of the migraine. If so, that helps with the decision of whether or not to take the medicine.
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