Love of Aviation: My First Android Application

Recently Google came out with Nexus-7 Android tablet. While general consumers are salivating about the screen size, processor speed, memory, and flash, any pilot would notice the inclusion of a gyroscope in the device.  Gyroscopes are the backbone of flight instruments and when I first heard about Nexus-7, I thought it would be nice if I could come up with an application that could use the Nexus-7 gyroscope to provide an artificial horizon (attitude indicator), and a heading indicator.

I did end up writing a gyroscopic based in-flight instruments application, and yesterday, I uploaded it to the Google app store (called Google Play).  You can find it when you search for "Attitude Indicator". Direct link is: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ds.gyro

Making the application was simple. Google solved the hard part of combining the gyroscope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7JQ7Rpwn2k), the accelerometer, and the magnetic compass to provide quaternion, which I converted to pitch, roll, and yaw, using some simple math. Then I used Gimp image editor to create some graphics around the orientation and some simple programming to connect the images to the rotation axis.

There are other applications that exist with similar functionality, but that does not stop me from exploring the technology, and feeling excited about it. 

The application is free. Please install it, test it, then leave comments. If I see some encouraging comments, I will put some more applications on the store, including the one I am currently working on (in testing stage), a free aviation GPS with VFR sectionals of the 48 states.