The accelerometer sensor is used to measure the force of acceleration acting on the phone. The sensor reports this force for each of the three principal axes, the x axis, y axis and, the z axis. The values obtained from the sensor are in metres per second squared,
m/s2
.
The x, y and z axes of a standard smartphone
Adding a Accelerometer to your app
To add an Accelerometer to your app:
1.
Go to the Blocks tab of your project
2.
Find the Sensors drawer of blocks and click on the ⊕ symbol to add a Sensor to your app
3.
Select Accelerometer from the menu that pops up
You will see a settings panel where you can set:
The Name of the Accelerometer
Whether the Accelerometer is Enabled
Whether the Sensitivity of the Accelerometer is low, medium or high
You can either confirm your choices and create the Accelerometer, or delete the Accelerometer.
Change Settings of Accelerometer
You will see the sensors you have added to your app underneath the Sensors section of your blocks.
If you click on the ⚙ icon next to your Accelerometer, you will be able to edit its settings as seen in the panels above. You can click on your Accelerometer's name to access its drawer of blocks.
Events
Shaking
There may be some instances where you want to start an event by shaking your mobile device or when the mobile device is shook. There is a Shaking event that you can add to your blocks that has sensitivity levels of high, medium and low
Changes
When the accelerometer sensor detects a change in the force acting on the phone the Changes event will be fired. Each time the event fires the four associated parameters will be updated.
Parameter
Type
Returns
xAcceleration
Number
Change in speed of the phone, along the x axis, in
m/s2
yAcceleration
Number
Change in speed of the phone, along the y axis, in
m/s2
zAcceleration
Number
Change in speed of the phone, along the z axis, in
m/s2
error
String
Error message from sensor
Functions
Get Acceleration on X, Y, Z axes
You can get the values for xAcceleration, yAcceleration and zAcceleration at any time with the following blocks.
Properties
Enabled
By default the accelerometer sensor will be turned on, but you can use the Enabled property to read its current state and to change its state, i.e turn the sensor on and off.
Property
Type
Default
set Enabled
Bool
True
get Enabled
Bool
Sensitivity
You can use the Sensitivity blocks to set the sensitivity of the Accelerometer and get its current level of sensitivity.