Feasibility of a smartphone ambient light sensor as a revolution counter

Authors

  • Kari Van Vliet McMaster University

Abstract

This paper explores the use of the ambient light sensor on an LG G3 smartphone as a tachometer. A method of detemining the RPM of a rotating chopper using variation in light intensity is presented and the accuracy of the results are examined under different lighting conditions and different distances between chopper blade and the sensor. The response time of the ambient light sensor is determined to be between 0.03 and 0.04s. The response time is used to determine the width of the chopper required to accurately determine the RPM of a bicycle wheel travelling 20km/h using the smartphone ambient light sensor system.

References

Making sense of light sensors j EE Times, 2006. URL https:

//www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1272314.

Ambient-Light Sensing Optimizes Visibility and Battery Life of

Portable Displays - Tutorial - Maxim, 2011. URL https://www.

maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/5051.

J. A. Sans, F. J. Manjn, A. L. J. Pereira, J. A. Gomez-Tejedor,

and J. A. Monsoriu. Oscillations studied with the smartphone

ambient light sensor. European Journal of Physics, 34(6):1349,

ISSN 0143-0807. doi:10.1088/0143-0807/34/6/1349. URL

http://stacks.iop.org/0143-0807/34/i=6/a=1349.

J. A. Sans, J. Gea-Pinal, M. H. Gimenez, A. R. Esteve, J. Solbes,

and J. A. Monsoriu. Determining the eciency of optical sources

using a smartphones ambient light sensor. European Journal of

Physics, 38(2):025301, 2017. ISSN 0143-0807. doi:10.1088/1361-

/aa51a9. URL http://stacks.iop.org/0143-0807/38/i=2/

a=025301.

Qiangqiang Fu, Ze Wu, Fangxiang Xu, Xiuqing Li, Cuize

Yao, Meng Xu, Liangrong Sheng, Shiting Yu, and Yong

Tang. A portable smart phone-based plasmonic nanosensor

readout platform that measures transmitted light intensities

of nanosubstrates using an ambient light sensor. Lab on a

Chip, 16(10):1927{1933, May 2016. ISSN 1473-0189. doi:

1039/C6LC00083E. URL http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/

articlelanding/2016/lc/c6lc00083e.

Bahaa E. A. Saleh and Malvin Carl Teich. Semiconduc-

tor Photon Detectors. In Fundamentals of Photonics, pages

{695. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991. ISBN 978-0-471-

-1. URL http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/

ch17/summary. DOI: 10.1002/0471213748.ch17.

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2018)

Downloads

Published

2018-01-16

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2018): The McMaster Journal of Engineering Physics

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.