Proximity Sensor and Ambient Light Sensor - Hardware Hacking General

I am doing a project analyzing sensors. I am trying to make an experiment using the proximity sensors. I have managed to utilize apps of the market to find out some things.
I am using a Photon 4g. The sensor is ISL29030
The sensor has a resolution of 100cm, meaning it can detect things 100cm away. But it only has 2 settings. 3 cm and 100cm, but nothing in-between.
If there anyway i can obtain the raw sensor data? I need the in between stuff.
For example the ambient light sensor. It has a resolution of about 27,000 sci. I am able to get all the in-between stuff. but not for the proximity sensors.
Is there a way to modify the driver to get the desired information?

Related

[Q] Ambient light sensor and backlight

According to the Leo/Linux status wiki (http://htc-linux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Leo/Status) the Ambient Light Sensor is still not working properly.
That would explain why auto backlight adjustment does not work.
However, when in the phone screen the light sensor seems to work in that the screen goes dark when I cover the light sensor, as expected.
So I am curious as to the status of this regarding auto backlight specifically, does anyone have any more concrete info?
Perhaps there are separate light sensors? Or perhaps the light sensor only works in a limited fashion for the time being?
Just curious, not complaining
(P.S. the free "Battery Level" widget from the Market has worked well for me in the absence of auto backlight adjustment, in case others find it useful)
well there's a proximity sensor on the phone that comes into play while you are in an active call. it disables the back as you put the phone to your ear. you were simply simulating that action by covering the sensor with your hand.
Ah ok! Thats what the proximity sensor is. That is indeed marked as working on the status wiki, so that makes sense.
Thanks!

[Q] Anyone able to locate just where the light sensor is?

This may be a total noob question, but I was just curious to know the exact location of the light sensor because I cant seem to figure out where it is located.
EricSS619 said:
This may be a total noob question, but I was just curious to know the exact location of the light sensor because I cant seem to figure out where it is located.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That dot that looks like a front facing camera (FFC) - that is your sensor there that controls screen on/off on calls and the auto brightness.
riggsandroid said:
That dot that looks like a front facing camera (FFC) - that is your sensor there that controls screen on/off on calls and the auto brightness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure, because when I ran sensor test that dot did change the proximity sensor values, but the light values wouldnt change even if I covered it completely.
The only way I was able to change the light value was to move the whole phone into a darker or brighter location, but not by finding a pinpoint sensor on the phone.
Edit 2: When I cover the proximity sensor dot (the obvious one) with my finger and shine a light at the phone, nothing happens, and when I remove my finger from the dot and shine a light right on it, the screen gets brighter. I suspect both sensors are in the same spot (the plastic dot you see probably transmits ambient light to the light sensor as well as housing the proximity sensor, in the way many computers use a little clear/frosted plastic piece to indicate the status of an LED that is buried in the chassis.
Try it with a flashlight and see if you get different results.
If you are interested in disabling the light sensor go into settings and manually set your brightness.
I have to say the proximity sensor works much better than on my Hero.
Sent from my HTC Evo Shift 4G
i noticed the proximity sensor responds much faster than the one on my Evo
The light sensor is just to the right of the proximity sensor under the speaker grill. Turn on auto-brightness and test it with your finger.
Sent from my PG06100
BrandoKC said:
If you are interested in disabling the light sensor go into settings and manually set your brightness.
I have to say the proximity sensor works much better than on my Hero.
Sent from my HTC Evo Shift 4G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats because i dont believe there is a proximity sensor on the hero.
karnoff said:
thats because i dont believe there is a proximity sensor on the hero.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess that's why it would be working better!

Ambient light sensor readings (discrete vs continuous)

Hi
I have noticed that the readings from the ambient light sensor on the HTC One are reported as discrete values (10,40,90,160,225,320,640,1280,2600 and finally 10240). On other devices I have experience with, the readings are often continuous.
An other issue is that the so called "ambient" light sensor on the HTC One works more like a spot light sensor, in my opinion. For example standing below a ceiling down light results in a very hight "ambient" light reading even if the actual light (hence ambient light) in the room are pretty dark. Keeping the phone at the same position just angeling it a few degrees any direction will lead to a dramatical drop in the sensor reading. The intervals in between the reported values doesn't exactly help either.
My point is that the ambient light sensor is influenced to much by direct light sources rather than actually register the ambient light in the surroundings. I have not seen similar behavior in other devices from other manufacturers.
I know that the ambient light sensor for the Galaxy SII reported discrete ambient light values with stock kernel, and continuous values with the CM kernel.
Can the HTC One kernel devs change the behavior of the HTC One ambient light sensor the same way? I'm guessing that the reported values are a result of software (kernel/config/other), rather then the actual sensor itself.
I think the behavior of the sensor can explain why the display backlight control of the HTC One seems to be "less" precise, especially in bright condition, and that the display often feels to bright.
On my Galaxy Tab, the ambient light sensor is also reported in discrete value, and it generally doesn't really work with adjusting screen brightness. tbh, the most responsive ambient light sensor i've seen is on the macbook pros.
I have been googling this looking for a solution but i have not found one. I use Sensor Explorer and it reports back that the HTC One light sensor [cm36282] has a resolution of 1 lux, so it should be able to report continuous values at this resolution. How can we enable this? Is this kernel dependent or OS dependent? I wish this issue got more attention, but as i've noticed through my googling i don't find many threads regarding this issue. I would like to have the ability to fully utilize my sensor.

Available Sensors in Honor 5X

Honor 5X has the following sensors.
Accelerometer- For auto rotate feature, the accelerometer is one of the most common sensors one can find in a smartphone. It checks and analyze if a phone is ideal or is in motion. It calculates the orientation of your smartphone along 3 axes. Information gathered from Accelerometer is used by apps or OS to switch the orientation of the screen between portrait or landscape as per your movement. Any app, smartphone feature or game that reacts to you by tilting your phone depends on Accelerometer data.
Ambient Light Sensor- For adjusting the brightness automatically, the light sensor comes into the picture to measure the brightness of ambient light. It sends its reading to the phone’s brain(processor) which as per the operating system’s algorithm adjusts display’s luminosity. If the place is dark and the dusky phone automatically dims the screen brightness so that it won’t affect user’s eyes. On the other hand, under direct sunlight phone maximizes brightness level.
Proximity Sensor- The Proximity sensor is another common sensor present in every smartphone. It comes equipped with an infrared LED and an IR light detector. Proximity sensor radiates a beam of infrared light which gets reflected from the nearby object and this reflection is registered by IR scanner. Ever noticed how your screen goes off when you are on a call and your phone is near to your ears? Because of this sensor so that it allows you to have an uninterrupted calling experience because screen is off and you don’t need to bother about call getting disconnected accidentally.
Digital Compass or Magnetometer- ever ran into situation at unknown/new location and want to know the direction? As the name implies Magnetometer is used to sense Magnet fields and provide information defining your phone’s orientation with respect to it. All compass apps use Magnetometer sensor to detect your physical direction on the map. Due to this very reason our digital map rotates automatically in the same direction when we take a turn while driving.
Fingerprint Sensor- Do I really need to explain this? well yeah I certainly can quickly. The last but certainly not the least in the list is a fingerprint sensor. The fingerprint sensor is currently trending in the smartphone industry. The fingerprint sensor proves handy if you carry lots of important details in your smart device. It senses the ridges of the finger skin. Fingerprint sensors can be used to conveniently unlock the device, app lock, calling, camera click, muting alarms and many more.
Sadly it does not have Gyroscope So can't do VR related things and games like Pokemon Go

Infrared selfies!

Since our beloved S8 has an iris scanner, which works using both the front-facing camera and an infrared reader, is there any way to gather data from said infrared reader? Not sure how useful it could be, but reading remote controls, or making infrared-light selfies (depending on the resolution of the sensor) would be possible!
Has anyone tried getting data out from the sensor?
Like a thermal camera? I'd doubt the data would, in any way, be useful.
The infrared camera supports only a fixed focal point, any other will be useless
As far as I know all cameras have infrared filter build in to limit IR light from affecting visible light color balance. It still does pick up some IR light (you can check it by shining remote control into camera), but if you want IR photo you need camera that can bypass IR filter altogether (there are some). Also I don't think iris sensor ir emitter is strong enough to light up anything except for close proximity, even if you could bypass ir filter. And in case you wonder, yes IR photo can have some strange side effects in certain circumstances.
Yes, the camera actually takes an infrared video, you can try this by typing *#0*# on the dialer, and then selecting 'IRIS CAMERA TEST'. But only the security sub-system has access to it (Try and take a screenshot or screen recording and you'll see) so my guess is that it would be possible with root access (?)
I just want to turn the ir light on and off at will. How to do that?

Categories

Resources