Automated Sprint Stopwatch

Smartphones can do cool things, there are even plenty of stopwatch apps available for them. However, when you are an athlete and want to measure the time of a run this may become tedious since most smartphones have no physical buttons anymore and finding the right spot while running is a difficult task.

This simple (and still experimental) app offers you a stopwatch that is triggered by your movements while running. Simply activate it, hold your phone in your hand and start running. As soon as the phone detects a motion it starts the timer (and vibrates to indicate that).

As soon as the movement drops below a certain threshold the timer is stopped again (pointing the phone downwards towards the finish line when you cross it seems to be a feasible option for this). You can now experiment with your own thresholds in the settings of the app.

Furthermore, the latest version brings a timer that vibrates after a freely definable interval calculated from the distance and the time you want to run.

Since this is still an experimental app (working fine on a Sony Xperia Ray), any comments and suggestions for further improvement are welcome.

Note: Samsung's Galaxy SII (and other phones as well) seems to have a lower upper limit for acceleration values so that it is necessary to reduce the threshold for "running" considerably. Other phones such as Motorola Razor have a much higher measuring range, so you perhaps need to experiment a bit with the thresholds as well.