Google's 'Science Journal' App Turns Your Android Device Into A Laboratory (pcmag.com) 29
An anonymous reader writes about Google's latest 'Science Journal' app that was released at the end of Google I/O last week: Google has launched its 'Science Journal' app that can essentially turn your Android device into a tricorder of sorts. The app uses the sensors in your smartphone to gather, graph and visualize data. For example, you can use Google's Science Journal app to measure sound in a particular area over a particular period of time, or the movement of the device's internal accelerometers. The app is fairly basic to start, but Google is working to expand its functionality. It's even partnering with San Francisco's Exploratorium to develop external kits that can be used with the app -- which includes various microcontrollers and other sensors. As part of its Google Field Trip Days initiative, which allows students from underserved communities to attend a local museum for no cost and includes transportation and lunch, Google sent out 120,000 kits to local science museums. They also sent out 350,000 different pairs of safety glasses to schools, makerspaces, and Maker Faires worldwide, to ultimately help young students work on even bigger projects. You can download the app from the Play Store and start experimenting here.
Great. (Score:3)
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LabView's a massive disaster. Yeah, nice cool GUI with wires and boxes and whatnot, but no way to read code to debug; no way to know what really is inside a box,...
The main problem with putting math software on a touchscreen device is the difficulty of entering numbers or commands accurately.
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The main problem with putting math software on a touchscreen device is the difficulty of entering numbers or commands accurately.
There are at least two alternatives I could come up with. For equation/formula input, or general entry of data, the presence of an camera is an enabler for specialized OCR (recognition of equations/formulas, tables, maybe even charts). In case of using the screen, something Graffiti/Teeline-like, combined with structured editing of input (as opposed to ASCII entry) - and perhaps dynamic menus (dynamic keys, really) as well - would also greatly facilitate interaction.
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And buy a myDAQ from sparkfun.com. It comes with a free student version of LabView (only diff. is a watermark). The myDAQ is an entry-level A/D converter, power supply, signal generator, etc. The specs are pretty sweet for the price.
And LabView is not hard to debug if you know how to use it. It actually has lots of great debugging features like step-through, step-over, and incremental operations (hitting space to advance) so you can find the bug. Many things that people think are bugs are actually the
Sort of like... (Score:2)
Sort of like how Slashdot now pushes "celebrity news" and super sciency de=fluoridization products on its main page.
pinky and the brain (Score:2)
Well yea but its google. (Score:2)
Tones of mobile devices taking all kinds of readings and interpreting the data in a meaningful way. ,see and hear everything around you and log your conversations, when they can get detailed scans and biometrics to add to there database.
After all, why stop with letting Google track everywhere you go
I'm so glad that Google is using "field trip days" to impress on our young people just how important it is to carry a detailed omnidirectional datal
Awesome! (Score:2)
Where do I attach the Liebig condenser?
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Google's 'Science Journal' App Turns Your Android Device Into Another Way To Provide Self-Tracking Data For Google To Monetize
Do you think Google isn't already doing this? They wrote the OS, after all.
This is just an app that lets the user access the sensors more directly.
Headlines. (Score:2)
I thought from the title of the app that it was going to be a nice handy lab notebook app, with lots of helpful features and prompts for documenting your experimental apparatus. Maybe even specifically student/teacher friendly.
But no, it's just another sensor data grapher, like a hundred others, except with more googlie eyes staring at you.
Backlash coming soon? (Score:2)
From what I hear rumbling in the undergrowth, I get a feeling that there is a growing feeling of unease with the way big corporations gather data and with the purpose of doing so; this is obviously just another element in this. To readers of /. I suppose it is already blindingly obvious that Google don't do this simply because they are excited about 'science' and would love to share the experience with everybody, but people in general have been rather more trusting - but I think it is changing.
The question
Google plans to... (Score:2)
Pull the plug on the app by the end of next year after all of the developers move on to shinier projects...
Or use one of the may other apps that do this (Score:2)
I downloaded a free app a few weeks ago to take better advantage of all my phone's sensors. Tested the magnetometer, gravitometer on an old gold/silver mine in the mountains, as a matter of fact.
Still didn't find gold.