Obligatory iPhone Posting

It appears I am the last blogger on planet earth to post about the iPhone. I tried to put it off as long as possible, but I am succumbing to peer pressure. I stopped in at the local Apple yesterday and had a chance to play with one. In looking at the phone the screen is the first thing that hits you. It’s gorgeous. My Nokia phone screen pales in comparison. You can actually surf the web with reasonable viewing. I would never surf the web with my Nokia phone. The second thing that hits you is the touch screen interface – no keys. Since I’m developing an early stage of carpal tunnel syndrome, I’m starting to justify my purchase decision based on medical conditions. I also found it interesting how the iPhone uses sensors to enhance the user experience. The device contains accelerometers to rotate the screen based on how the user holds it. There’s also an ambient light sensor and an infrared sensor. In this article the author describes other efforts to use sensors on handheld devices to improve a device’s usability.

Embedding sensors into devices has long been predicted and some have been tried, but the concept seems to be emerging into standard products now. Neil Gershenfeld’s book, When Things Start to Think outlines the use of sensors in clothing and other articles to make them more useful.

A project by Tanzeem Choudbury at Intel uses an accelerometer, a barometer, a humidity sensor, a thermometer, a light sensor, a digital compass, and a microphone to sense the users activity and social situation (home, office, crowded room) etc and make decisions based on the environment.

The iPhone is a game changer and as I wrote in my post last week I think it could be a valuable platform for virtual instrumentation. Screen navigation has improved that one can do fairly sophisticated programming on the device. Memory is large enough to support substantial features. Wireless connectivity allows the device to connect to hardware devices for control and data acquisition applications. The use of sensors can also leverage virtual instrumentation applications – detecting the ambient temperature, proximity, and other capabilities can make the device useful as a measurement tool all by itself.

In fact as devices continue to come out with sensors built-in, why not use virtual instrumentation to make use of those sensors for measurement and automation purposes?

Best regards,
Hall T.