# 3d modeling using smartphone accelerometers



## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

I assume this has been done already, maybe you can point me towards a company that offers something similar but is not absurdly expensive?

Smartphones have accelerometers built in. Even though they are likely not super precise, I imagine an app can be written to build a simple inertial compass that will track relative movements in 3 dimensions.

Using this method, one could trace a path around a room for example, and then plot this in a 3d graph. Or, one could trace the boundaries of the interior of a car and very quickly get some useful dimensions that would otherwise be impossible to model using a tape measure.

Does such an (android) app exist? Is there similar software for the PC that is not crazy expensive?

I invision attaching one of these decives to a microphone to create a probe that can record 3 dimensional locations and relate it to the audio recorded at those locations. If playing pink noise at the same time, one could quickly graph the characteristics of a listening space and find nodes at any frequency and their locations in that 3d space.

I imagine this would lead to more intuition about where to place bass and midbass drivers to achieve whatever goals you like. Plus, it would make modeling the acoustic properties of a very complex listening space easier.


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## spyders03 (Jan 5, 2013)

That would be a great app, I do not know of one that exists, (not saying much), but definitely intriguing, specially when you add in the microphone aspect. Could bring a whole new aspect to the home audio tuning game, and could probably even charge a premium for the service as well. I envision a display that would give you a 3d rotatable display with the hot spots marked in different colors. Very interesting, but also very labor (coding) intensive with a small market, meaning it would cost a premium if not done in the opensource community.


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