We heave just released version 1.1.1 with some important bugfixes. Please, if you still find any errors in phyphox, let us know via email (staacks@physik.rwth-aachen.de), via our forums or via the tracker on github.
Changelog
Changes on Android
Offer additional apps when exporting (using a view-intent in addition to the share-intent)
Fix crash in data picker
Changes on iOS
Fix: Elevator experiment not working due to an error in the new formula parser
Fix: Crash of color plot (mostly when starting the sonar experiment)
Fix: Color map not showing if any z value is infinite (encountered in magnetic spectrum)
Fix: Crash when picking data points in graph with history (i.e. in the sonar experiment)
Fix: Crash in reduce module for fewer y than x data points
Fixes for iOS 13: Crash when opening experiments and design of tab bar
There is one more addition introduced with phyphox 1.1.0, which we would like to highlight separately as we were afraid that it might be overlooked among all the new features: The Vietnamese translation created by Nguyen Truong Vu from Phoenix Education in Hue. Thanks a lot for helping us to offer our app to users around the world!
More information about our voluntary translators and available languages can be found on our languages page.
Phyphox 1.1.0 did not just introduce a ton of new features but also several translations which we feature separately to give due credit to our translators. One of these translations is Chinese (with simplified characters, to be precise) provided by Changcheng Ju (Nanjing University). Thanks a lot for your help!
More information about our voluntary translators and available languages can be found on our languages page.
French-speaking users certainly have already noticed that we have released the French translation with Monday’s update to version 1.1.0. Still, we wanted to post a separate news entry to thank our voluntary translators for their help to translate phyphox into their language as the French translation was provided by Julien Basset (Université Paris-Sud), Frédéric Bouquet (Université Paris-Sud) and Ulysse Delabre (Université de Bordeaux).
More information about our voluntary translators and available languages can be found on our languages page.
Finally, after much more time than anticipated, the big update has been released: Version 1.1.0
This one includes interactive graphs (zooming, picking points, measuring differences between points), new graph types (multiple data sets, bar charts, color plots), experiment transfer via QR codes and an extremely versatile Bluetooth Low Energy interface.
We could write entire articles on each of these and there are so many more improvements and small details… Well, here is a video with a quick overview of the big ones.
If this is not yet enough for you, here is the full changelog:
Changelog
Changes on Android and iOS
Phyphox is licenced under the GNU General Public Licence from this version onwards
Interactive graphs (zooming, picking points, linear fit)
New experiment: Applause meter
Multi-line plots
Bar charts
Color plots (used in spectrum experiments)
Open experiments from zip files or QR codes
Raw sensor experiments now feature a multi-line version
New languages: Chinese (simplified script), French, Vietnamese
Acoustic stopwatch has a new “many” tab , which allows measuring of an unlimited number of events, giving each interval and calculating the rate (Hz or bpm) and average interval of all events
Improvements to make the sonar more reliable
Performance optimizations for several experiments
Distance from start info for GPS-Experiment
Inclination experiment now features several different reference systems
Removed the libraries jquery and flot from the remote interface, which now uses chart.js instead
Remote interface now starts with a font-size recommended by the browser and allows changing the font size
Picking data points in the remote interface
The remote interface allows to show a single graph filling the full screen
Remote interface now communicates through a queue to avoid missed requests by the single-threaded webserver on the phone
Introduced a default color palette, which is used for coloring multiple graphs and can be referenced to by using names (red, blue, etc.) instead of RGB-values
Experiment configurations can be loaded directly from BLE devices
New device info report from menu on main screen
Add color to special categories (saved states and simple custom experiments)
Allow external experiments to define icon and category colors
Allow renaming of saved states
Use experiment title as default file name when exporting data, saved states or screenshots
Show state title in experiment info
Add hint to start button and add logic to hint bubbles, so they only show up until the user has used the specific function a few times
Fix: Wrong scaling of data in Doppler experiment due to outlying points
Fix: Consider available precision in remote interface to avoid retrieving the same value multiple times
Improve magnetic ruler for longer measurements
Fix inelastic collision experiment only working after pressing “reset”
Disable export and explain it to the user if an experiment configuration does not define an export
Changes on Android
Fix calculation of GPS height above geoid (MSL) if non-GPS satellite systems (GLONASs) are used
Vertical accuracy in GPS data if supported by some Android 8+ devices
Support temperature and humidity sensors
Support vendor-specific sensors by guessing their function by name
Improved performance by using native code for some operations
Improved Fourier transform performance by using the FFTW library
Allow screen rotation during measurement (now consistent with iOS)
Prevent adding identical experiments multiple times
Add notice when no address for the remote access is available
GPS now also uses network data by default and offers to force GPS only in the menu
Fix: Crash on malformed icon data
Fix: Sort categories case-insensitive
Fix loading experiments from URLs without query strings
Fix: Result response from webserver used broken JSON format.
Limit state title length
Changes on iOS
Complete rewrite of experiment parser. Much faster and much more stable when loading external experiments with errors.
Buffer rewritten. This should fix previous crashes in long-term measurements due to a race condition when accessing the buffers.
Respect save area guides to avoid drawing the UI in areas used by system buttons or the notch (iPhone X and similar)
Fix: Missing parts of a translation fall back to English defaults
Fix: Pick experiment language according to app language and avoid using unreleased languages already present in the experiment definition files
Fix: Re-saving states crashes the app
Fix: Power function fails for negative exponents
File format (version 1.7)
New graph types and multiple graphs
New Bluetooth Low Energy definitions
New “formula” analysis module
New “reduce” analysis module
New “map” analysis module
New attribute to enable analysis optimization (only re-run modules if their inputs have changed)
Label and unit can (and should) be separated for graphs to allow giving the right unit when reading a single data point
It took us much longer than expected to bring the new features to iOS. In the meantime Apple has introduced public beta testing, so now everybody can try out the new features.
Please help us to find the last bugs, so we can publish a perfect version in a few weeks. Please report any problems in our forums or via email.
You can find instructions on how to get the test version on our download page.
The phyphox team has been awarded the “Archimedes award” 2019 by the “Verband zur Förderung des MINT-Unterrichts” (MNU, loosely translated: association to forward STEM education). The award entails 4,000€ sponsored by the Westermann group. It is awarded yearly, alternating in the fields of mathematics and physics, to decorate innovative concepts and teaching methods as well as particularly commited teachers.
The app has been developed at the 2nd Institute of Physics at the RWTH Aachen University under the direction of Prof. Christoph Stampfer and Dr. Sebastian Staacks statt and it is being continuously refined in cooperation with the 1st Institute of Physics under Prof. Heidrun Heinke and a team of PhD students.
The award does not only mention the app itself, but the MNU emphasizes the value of the accompanying material like the demonstration videos. With more than 600,000 installations worldwide phyphox has been establish in many schools since its first release in September 2016.
I’d like to share the work by Christoph Holz and Alexander Pusch from the University of Münster, who have created a 3D-printed coil that can be attached to the phone. This way, you can measure the current through the coil by measuring the resulting magnetic field. The have also created a phyphox experiment configuration, with which the coil can be calibrated, so you get a current-reading directly in phyphox.
This has been published in German in Naturwissenschaft im Unterricht Physik, 169, S.46-47 and a short version (also in German) can be read on physikkommunizieren.de. The phyphox configuration is listed and explained in English in our wiki.
Thanks to Wakana Okita and Keisuke Takashima phyphox now speaks Japanese. More information about our voluntary translators can be found on our languages page.
Changelog
Changes on Android and iOS
Japanese translation.
Changes on Android
Fix: The experiment “light” was not available if the list of preferred languages in Android did not support any language supported by phyphox.
The phyphox team has been awarded the “Archimedes award” 2019 by the “Verband zur Förderung des MINT-Unterrichts” (MNU, loosely translated: association to forward STEM education). The award entails 4,000€ sponsored by the Westermann group. It is awarded yearly, alternating in the fields of mathematics and physics, to decorate innovative concepts and teaching methods as well as particularly commited teachers.
