Improved Pitch and Roll Display

[ugk]

Hi menion,

The pitch and roll display currently range from 0 to 360 degrees, so that, for example, 15deg roll to the left is displayed as 15deg; whereas 15deg roll to the right is displayed as 345deg.

It would be nice to have an option to change the display to +/-180deg, so that 15deg roll to the right would be shown as -15deg, which is easier to 'understand', because the number is similar to that for the same amount of roll to the left - just different sign.  The same holds for pitch.

Also, for mounting the phone in a car cradle (where it may be at 'strange' angles for easy viewing), it would be nice to be able to specify offsets to set 0deg roll and 0deg pitch when the vehicle is level.
Ideally, there would be a 'Set to Zero' button between the pitch and roll display.  The user would short-click this button when the vehicle is level and roll and pitch would be set to 0.  On long-click, there could be a pop-up menu with fields to manually enter offsets for roll and pitch and with a 'Reset' button to restore the offsets to default (0).

Thanks

[ugk]

Hi menion,

In my previous post, I suggested a method to make the Roll and Pitch display more meaningful when the phone is not help 'flat', e.g. somewhat upright in a car cradle.  However, this method now appears quite complicated and perhaps cumbersome to use and implement, because I found that the phone, when fitted to a car cradle, is basically upright (90 deg) and square to the car.

I also found that the roll display can get 'confused' in this orientation and sometimes shows 180 degree roll - perhaps a different axis of the sensor needs to be used in that orienation.

It may therefore be a simple matter of using the phone's direction to automatically switch to different axes of the sensors and add offsets as multiples of 90 degrees to show 0 degrees pitch and roll when the phone is held 'straight' upright.  A filter would be good to prevent intermittent switching on a bumpy track.


An option to switch the display from 0...360 to -180...+180 would still be good, as explained in my previous post.


Such an improved display would be useful for offroad driving, where the vehicle can assume quite steep angles.  Many (expensive) 4WDs have built-in roll and pitch indicators - mine hasn't.

Thanks