Barometers In iPhones Mean More Crowdsourcing In Weather Forecasts 79
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.
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Quick, everybody leave your phone in the car for an hour. For science.
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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 updati
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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?
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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.
Re:Thus we can settle the debate. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.
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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.
And? (Score:3)
Re:haha (Score:5, Funny)
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The distortion field is strong in you young padawan.
Re:haha (Score:4)
Which technology would that be? Definitely not processor technology.
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Re:haha (Score:5, Insightful)
"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
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I understand most of the other guys, but who is 'Inter Alia"?
Re:haha (Score:4, Funny)
Her brother is the Kwisatz Haderach...
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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.
I wish I could read (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I wish I could read (Score:4, Insightful)
Presbyopia [wikipedia.org] and Helvetica. A miserable combination.
Getting old is not for the weak.
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Re:iOS and OSX (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Open source? (Score:2)
I guess Apple was feeling the pressure (Score:2)
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.
wonder who will be the first (Score:2)
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! (Score:2)
Yay! We can finally all figure out what the average weather inside teenagers pockets is! Woot!
Barometers In iPhones! (Score:2)
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Smallprint: oh yeah, Android had them for years
I now expect Apple to launch a billion dollar lawsuit against Samsung over the lowercase letter, "i" in Android. Alternatively, I expect Apple to launch a billion dollar lawsuit against Samsung for showing atmospheric pressure in millibars; thereby infringing upon Apple's invention of the word.
High frequency pressure waves (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What for? (Score:3)
Re:What for? (Score:5, Interesting)
It can help GPS fixes be acquired faster. Barometers provide a rough estimate of altitude and can aid GPS fixes. See https://plus.google.com/+DanMorrill/posts/jVJhPyouWDP
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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?
Accurate altitude detection? GPS altitude isn't that accurate (at least on cheap consumer level GPS receivers). I have a hand-held Garmin GPS targeted at hiking and it has a barometer built in for more accurate altitude. Perhaps phones are adding them for the same reason.
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Provided it's calibrated to the proper atmospheric pressure where you are. Simple weather changes can easily shift your altitude 100 feet either way making it no more reliable than a GPS fix. Granted, if you can obtain the local sea level pressure where you are, you can beat GPS quite handily. But if you can't, you're pretty much guessing your altitude.
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Actually, the barometer on my phone is pretty good. Absent a radical atmospheric change, it roughly knows when I've climbed one floor in an elevator for instance. I doubt that the gyroscope sensors could be giving it this level of information. In any case, by itself this information is almost useless, but when correlated with other data points from other sensors, that's when application developers could use that information to infer much more useful information.
For instance, with this kind of information, a
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Do you even know what you just said? It knows when you go up and down floors. All this data mining, they know your address, your GPS coordinates, and which floor you're on. Maybe not down to the room number, but I bet they can deduce that through other means (steps taken, etc.). One has to wonder what all this information is going to eventually be used for, and perhaps what the use for it is already.
Yes, I realize what I've said, but I've done the privacy thing. I've rooted my Android phone and installed a privacy-focused ROM, but that just ended up drastically limiting my user experience and annoyed the hell out of me. I'm not doing that again.
The corporations can overthrow the government and throw you in Gitmo. I'm not going to be the one to stop them. I like my comforts and my conveniences far too much to do anything about it.
Floor In Building (Score:2)
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.
Labs and other pressurized spaces? (Score:2)
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Advertising. Location service can now not only tell what store you're shopping in, but which floor.
The more user-friendly side-effect is for outdoor activities (tracking runs, hikes, etc.) - much more accurate elevation change info than GPS, whose vertical resolution is terrible.
Wush ... (Score:2)
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?
drone pilot (Score:2)
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$700 phone instead of a much cheaper ArduPilot? Why???
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They've already been around for years. A few extra sensor provided by the drone kit instead of the iPhone. This just makes them cheaper because your kit doesn't need as many sensors.
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secondary microphone (Score:2)
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. [slate.com]
Missing sensors (Score:2)
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
Useful for barometric migraines (Score:2)
I know several people who get barometric migraines [webmd.com], 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 [wikipedia.org] and sumatriptan [wikipedia.org] 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 headach