Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite Reviews

PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite has access to more sensor data than any other app. However, none of these privacy controls appear in the privacy menu of settings. Once you “give permission“ to PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite it kind of doesn’t ask anymore. For every single asset which PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite has access to, such as the gyroscope or the microphone or the camera or the magnetometer or any sensory input data, there should be a button in the settings menu for privacy that will allow us to control that. If I want to only allow the magnetometer, I should be able to disable everything else and only allow the magnetometer. If I want to only allow the gyroscope, I should be able to disable everything else and only allow the gyroscope. The sensor and usage data is also a very touchy issue in Apple settings all by itself, because they don’t really intend to give you privacy either. If you say yes, you could never take it back you can never undo it and then every app will be able to access this data. Our gyroscope and magnetometer should have the same amount of privacy protections as our gyroscope and magnetometer. I should be able to totally throttle all sensory input access to PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite as well as any app. Including and especially the sensor suite.

I downloaded the “suite” and was unable to export data. The 3d magnetic field visualization was cool, but I otherwise found the apps contained in the suite to be unuseful since there is no way to get the data out! So this is rudimentary compared to the individual apps for each purpose (search for “accelerometer” and “magnetometer” apps from the same developer.) The suite does NOT let you save and export csv data, while the individual apps do.

Acceleration rate on my ipad is not sufficient to resolve harmonic oscillations (for a low frequency oscillation either the acceleration is too low or you are at or below the Nyquist rate.) But this isnt an app issue but rather a hardware limitation.

Tried using the barometer but I was then unable to access the settings, info icon or even back out to the main menu! Had to force-close 😢 iphone is on iOS 13.7

While sitting still within the gravity well of earth the Z accelerometer should read 9.8m/s^2. It should read zero only if the device is in free fall or in space. See: Einstein.

A very thorough job using all sensors, nicely categorized. The AR tool is way cool, you can use it to make virtual 3d treasure maps with the kids.
One feature request: the compass needs to show the actual decimal reading along with the analog dial, otherwise you’re making a needless estimation of heading (see the iphone built in compass app for comparison).
So 1 star taken away for that, plus the audio waveform analyzer was crashing PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite when i tried to use it.
But overall this is the most useful app i found for general gps and orientation info.

PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite is very well done, and packs a lot of useful sensors and analysis into one nice package. The magnetic field AR is especially amazing! As a physics teacher, I have long struggled to help my students visualize magnetic fields, and get them to really understand that they are three-dimensional. This AR visualization makes that (very nearly) obvious!

Looking forward to being able to export oscilloscope data in a future update.

to the developers!

The sound meter graph auto scaling hasn’t worked on my iPhone 11 or iPad Pro (6th gen) for quit some time now. I sure hope that can be fixed soon. Otherwise, this is an absolutely outstanding application!

Do you know those sensory microchips a fringe element of the mental health spectrum insisted were in COVID vaccines? That was misdirection. Those gadgets really are in your cell phone and PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite lets you know what they are reporting in human-readable form. Be advised that its compass is +90° off, but it's free—get it and satisfy your curiosity!

Could you report separately GPS vertical and horizontal accuracies? On most devices they are available as separate numbers. Will be happy to update to 5 stars when done!

UPD: 5 stars now. Thank you for listening!

I introduced this to my honors physics students today. Really looking forward to cooking up some labs for them to do at home. We just started the chapter on magnetic fields. Wish I would have had it for Newton’s Laws.

I plan to update my review after field testing PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite .

Offers many tools for free. Pro version is a very reasonable price and a one-time purchase. Developers continue to update and improve PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite .

Only slight complaint is the UI, I wish it was a little more polished and nice looking. But for what it is, it’s great.

PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite is very cool, although I must add one complaint- why can’t I record and export the audio oscilloscope data? That was the primary reason for my interest in PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite. It’s very cool that I can measure a sound wave so easily on my phone, but I would like to export the waveforms for post processing.

Just fooling around with PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite and found that the barometer is way way off. Right now, the actual barometer is about 30.2 and PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite shows 26.3

PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite is simple yet powerful, free and adds free. Get your kids and show them how a smartphone uses sensors, talk about the physics. Do your own experiments. Thank you for PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite.

This software helped me in so many everyday situations from “is my home’s 115 year old foundation stable?” To “is that ringing inside or outside of my ears?” And “am I REALLY the only one hearing those voices?” THANK YOU SO SO MUCH!!!!!

I have a couple of suggestions -
1) since the barometric pressure sensor is so sensitive, could it be possible to monitor infrasonic sound? (I don’t know if it has the bandwidth to do it).
2) if so, a spectrum analysis would also be interesting.

You may be able to monitor elephant vocalizations, storms, demolitions, volcanoes, etc.

3) In the same vein, a kinematics analysis of vibrations might be a useful little tool.

Thanks for this cool little tool.

Every tool in the toolbox worked on iPhone 11 Pro Max other than the proximeter. Very easy to use, can save results to CSV for export.

I used it since it’s inception. Love it

Useful app, lets you measure sensor values

Suggestions for future: show degrees for compass, allow toggling between magnetic north and true north, add ambient light sensor (might need to use private IOKit apis), add graph for sound intensity meter, and allow switching between bluetooth microphone, microphone near front facing camera, and microphone near charging port

I understand that you might not have time to implement these, but regardless, thank you for the great app!

My only complaint for PhysicsToolboxSensorSuite is that the oscilloscope’s range is too low and the multi-record menu doesn’t show some of the text. Other than that, it’s a great utility!