Using LabVIEW to acquire iPhone accelerometer data

Here’s another oldie but goodie … sometime last year I wrote code to acquire iPhone accelerometer data.  It’s the same concept as using LabVIEW to acquire Wii accelerometer data, but a little simpler since all you need is to get your PC connected to your iPhone via wifi.  You also need an app such as Accel Pro or iSensor, these apps can stream and broadcast your iPhone accelermeter data through UDP protocol.  I personally recommend Accel Pro over iSensor, the newest version of iSensor (1.01) has a bug that disable the Z axis values, but hey, you can’t really expect maintenance for a free app.  Although Accel Pro is $4.99, it’s got some more functionality than iSensor such as filtering and datalogging, so it’s worth taking a look.  However, Accel Pro doesn’t include compass data like iSensor, that’s a shame.

*Caution: Some apps may claim the ability to stream UDP data, but you might have to take a look at the UDP packet protocol for the app.  Just so happens that these 2 apps have almost the same protocol, for example:

ACC: 376153408593b159a8b5f0b75b29d642694394c0,173429.723,-0.091,-0.743,-0.634

So everything before the first comma is pretty much garbage, the second number appears to be a clock or a counter of some sort, and then comes the X, Y, Z, and compass data.

Be sure to switch broadcast mode on your iPhone app from “broadcast” to “unicast”, this seems to give the best performance.  You can download the LabVIEW 2009 code from below (right click on the link, then click “save as”.)  The code is just a variation of a LabVIEW UDP shipping example.  Enjoy!

http://groups.google.com.tw/group/riobotics/web/UDP%20Receiver%20for%20iSensor%20app.vi

-John