use my phone for route maping

mlmcelligott

Hi

Im starting a project where by I want to use a smart phone (HTC or apple iphone) to track the route of a cable duct. You cant get a gps signal underground so it will have to determine its route by using the inbuilt acceleromoters or gyroscopes to measure acceleration direction, pitch, roll and yaw.

The idea is to pass it trough the pipe by pulling it using a rope, collecting it at the other end and outputing the data to excel to graph its displacement on an x-y graph and a x-z graph.

Can it be done?

cnocbui

I would say no. You are after something with the precision of a top notch inertial guidance system. I think the sensors in phones are likely way too crude.

Accelerometers measure a change in velocity. A phone being pulled through a conduit at a steady speed will seem to the accelerometer to be at rest.

mlmcelligott

It would be traveling a constant speed but it will be going around bends so i thought the 3 axis accelerometer in my htc legend would pick up the changes in direction. it wouldnt need to be able to tell me what directions the bends are going in but rather how acute they are so id have an idea about how difficult it would be to pull cables through it. if i had a time stamp too for every x,y and z acceleration and i knew the pull rate then i could determine how far from the start of the duct they are.

The problem im having is i often waste alot of time trying to pull cables through the duct only to find out that the contractor who laid the cables put in too many bends because they didnt plan ahead and had to add in sever bends to get past existing services.

cnocbui wrote: »

I would say no. You are after something with the precision of a top notch inertial guidance system. I think the sensors in phones are likely way too crude.

Accelerometers measure a change in velocity. A phone being pulled through a conduit at a steady speed will seem to the accelerometer to be at rest.

Abelloid

How about a key-fob mini cam and maglite? See what's in there for yourself.