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The just released version 1.1.11 adds 3D depth sensors support to the previously available multiple smartphone sensors. Those augment the pixels of cameras with spatial depth information for better photos and augmented reality applications. The technology is known as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), time of flight (ToF) and true depth. The associated distance information opens up entirely new possibilities for physics experiments, but also for mathematics. In this context, phyphox is the first app in the education sector that equally utilizes front cameras with Face ID for this purpose, which are included in almost all current iPhones, for instance.

Exactly 6 years ago today, on September 12, 2016, phyphox was released in both major stores for Android and iOS. Originally intended for university lectures, using a salad spinner to analyze circular motion or determining the speed of sound with just two smartphones quickly found its way to schools as well – and around the world. This summer, we exceeded four million installations, more than one million of which as part of volume packages at schools.

The current phyphox release 1.1.10 supports a “depth” sensor based on the LiDAR scanner. The sensor gives a mean distance (“average”), a nearest (“closest”) or “weighted” in a defined portion of the standard camera view (20%×20%, centered). An average of distance measurements inside Apple’s framework is the phyphox default and could be switched off.

Work on the 3D ToF (Time Of Flight) sensor in some Android devices is also finished and has been tested on a Samsung G10 5G. Any further success stories in this regard are appreciated… 😉

Test experiments

• depth.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-15)
  Depth sensor (LiDAR)
• depth_no_smooth.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-15)
  Depth sensor (LiDAR), no smooth
• depth-minimal.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-15)
  Depth sensor (LiDAR), no preview
• distance-velocity-acceleration.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-15)
  Distance, velocity (numerical), acceleration (numerical)
• distance-velocity-acceleration_loess.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-20)
  Distance, velocity and acceleration by locally weighted scatterplot smoothing (LOESS)

Walk the Graph

• distance-time-graphs.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-25)
  Select one of nine different graphs to walk along. A score in % indicates how well graph and motion match.
• velocity-time-graphs.phyphox (last update: 2021-10-25)
  Select one of three different graphs to walk along. A score in % indicates how well graph and motion match.

Changelog

Changes on Android and iOS

• Audio spectrum now allows generating white noise.
• Tone generator supports dual tone generation.
• When leaving an experiment that ran for more than 10 seconds, phyphox shows a confirmation dialog.
• Improved stability of start detection on sonar (especially for iOS).
• New “config” endpoint in the REST API (remote access) to allow reading buffer, input and export configuration.
• Background slightly darker (the increasing number of apps with dark-mode make our old colors look “washed out”).
• Improved units for slopes (i.e. m/s²/s becomes m/s³ and m/s² / rad/s² becomes m).
• Fix: Quotation marks in value element mapping break remote access.

Changes on Android

• Direct config transmission via Bluetooth now also accepts plain xml.
• Set manifest attribute to allow unencrypted http.
• Fix broken screenshot for interactive/fullscreen graphs.
• Fix crash if time output of location input is not used.
• Fix crash for graph axes with precision 0 or 1 on Samsung S6 due to Java bug https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6469160.
• Allow using vendor-specific pressure sensor if detected by name.
• Prevent infinite loop in periodicity analysis module.
• Fix: Graph forgets zoom state after screen off / app switch / scroll to far tab.
• Fix: Cannot subscribe to characteristic on Chrome OS.
• Fix: Edit field does not respond to update from other user inputs.
• Make static buffers properly unwritable to prevent unexpected behavior by writing from modules with mixed outputs and to allow initializing them from external sources like Bluetooth.
• Fix crash if finished network request is reported to not visible button.
• Fix crash if models use 2D sensor data.

Changes on iOS

• Prevent duplicate additions to the experiment collection
• Share queue among data input of sensors, BLE, GPS and the analysis process to avoid receiving input data during the execution of an analysis seqeuence.
• Major changes in analysis cycle logic to be closer to Android version: Analysis is run periodically regardless of sensor input, there is a run before start, “onUserInput” is used as documented, input clear is done before writing the output.
• Fix: Access error when opening configuration from “files” app.
• Fix: No output on abs channel for 1D sensors.
• Fix: Scrollable tab bar on iOS13.
• Fix: Crash if audio permission is denied.
• Disable refresh rate limit for value view elements for more fluent feedback.

File format update to version 1.10

• Audio output now supports parametric tone and white noise generation.
• New analysis modules: interpolate, loess and sort.
• New functions in formula node: min, max and heaviside.
• New attributes to preset timed run parameters.
• New attribute “cycles” for every analysis module, which determines in which runs the module is used.
• New attribute to send blocks of network connection service “http/post” to switch between JSON arrays and JSON numbers.
• New response conversion function “none” for network connections, which is now the default.
• New graph attribute unitYperX to explicitly set a unit for the slope (i.e. y/x).
• Optimization attribute removed. (This was added very little advantage but a lot of confusion.)
• Transfer of experiment configurations now supports requesting the transfer from a second characteristic (especially useful if you are using an Arduino library that does not support reacting to subscriptions).

However, some experiments using the network interface as well as its documentation and editor support will follow soon.

Changelog

Changes on Android and iOS

• New network interface allowing to send and/or receive data to/from network services.
• New sensor db experiment, that allows you to contribute information about your device to our new (upcoming) sensor database.
• Highlight nearest BLE devices if multiple with same name are present.
• Use common time reference for multiple sensors, improving their synchronization.
• Location services (i.e. GPS) now use a database to translate elevation above the reference geoid and the WGS84 ellipsoid directly in phyphox and giving both values. This also fixes getting ellipsoid instead of geoid data on Android 10 devices.

Changes on Android

• Notify user if location service is not enabled when trying to scan for BLE devices.
• Fix attribute clash of phyphox and the web editor.
• Fix remote access problem on Android 4 devices.
• Improve title display for long titles
• Code maintenance under the hood (thanks to “TacoTheDank”)

Changes on iOS

• Fix wrong values if picking data points from logarithmic plots
• Fix applause meter losing scores
• Use advertised name of BLE devices instead of the local name buffered by iOS (for example fixing problems with Owon multimeters)
• Update BLE scan results, so changes in signal strength can be seen
• Fix analysis logic: Run analysis if input data has been changed by previous analysis run
• Fix some analysis crashes due to invalid integers
• Include EduRoom SDK (eduroom.de)
• Accept old “out” attribute for audio inputs to fix compatibility issues with older experiments

File format version 1.8

• Elements to define network interface
• autoConnect function to allow connection to BLE devices without scanning
• New formatting options for info elements: bold, italic, align and size
• New option to ignore sensor availability

More information about our voluntary translators and available languages 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.

Changelog

Changes on Android and iOS

• Location (GPS) experiment now calculates the distance travelled.
• Pendulum experiment shows a genreic results page first.
• Minor optimizations of remote access communication.
• Minor optimizations of text in experiments.
• Fix: Inclination experiment now resumes at correct timestamp.
• Fix: Jittery axis in roll experiment.

Changes on Android

• Allow installation on external storage.
• Added some MIME types to allow opening phyphox files from more third-party apps.
• Correct GPS height from WGS84 ellipsoid to geoid if possible.
• Adaptive Icons for Android 8.0.
• Fix: Order of external links now matches definition in custom experiments.
• Fix: Rotation lock ignored in main menu.

Changes on iOS

• Wider text fields.
• Icon-Positioning in tool bar no longer optimized by the app as this lead to problems on some iOS 11 versions.
• Remove subject text when sharing data or screenshots as this generates multiple files in iOS and leads to more trouble than it’s worth.
• Fix: Crash when using the remote access in hotspot mode.
• Fix: Crash when saving a saved state a second time.
• Fix: Crash when activating remote access while port 80 is already in use.
• Fix: Crash when the system does not support an audio rate of 48 kHz (for example when using AirPlay).
• Fix: Crash when external link has not been translated in custom experiment.
• Fix: Highlighted link not visible if not translated.
• Fix: Some sensors do not produce data on iPods (fix not tested).

There will also be a big workshop in Aachen on academic teaching with phyphox. If you are a college or university educator near Germany, this will be the event for you. However, it will be held in German and you will find more information here.

Additionally, there will be more events to be announced for Germany this year and next year. There are at least four public events, which are fixed and a few more planned, but I am waiting for the official release and/or schedule from the organizer.