A manual altimeter for use with i.e. water bottle or micro rockets. It asks the user for the distance between the launch point and the observation point. It uses the phone's gyroscope to give an angle. Using basic trigonometry, the height of the rocket can be calculated.
height = tan(angle) * distance
Is the basic formula used for guessing the height the rocket went.
There's also a simple CLI that will make the building of a manual altimeter easier. It's called Height, and you execute it by (after installing the JDK) executing javac Height.java; java Height. This will output something like this:
| angle (°) | height at 50.0m (m) | distance for 10.0m (m) |
|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 4.0 | 114.0 |
| 10.0 | 8.0 | 56.0 |
| 15.0 | 13.0 | 37.0 |
| 20.0 | 18.0 | 27.0 |
| 25.0 | 23.0 | 21.0 |
| 30.0 | 28.0 | 17.0 |
| 35.0 | 35.0 | 14.0 |
| 40.0 | 41.0 | 11.0 |
| 45.0 | 50.0 | 10.0 |
| 50.0 | 59.0 | 8.0 |
| 55.0 | 71.0 | 7.0 |
| 60.0 | 86.0 | 5.0 |
| 65.0 | 107.0 | 4.0 |
| 70.0 | 137.0 | 3.0 |
| 75.0 | 186.0 | 2.0 |
| 80.0 | 283.0 | 1.0 |
| 85.0 | 571.0 | 0.0 |
The column is the angle, second the height at that angle at 50m distance, the third is the distance you need for that angle to be 10m
A way to make the output more readable is to save the output in a markdown file and processing or previewing it.
java Height > output.md
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