Freescale has just announced the Xtrinsic MPL3115A2, a pressure sensor chip that includes an accurate altimeter (30cm accuracy in altitude). Obviously, the altimeter could help with upcoming indoor navigation, however we’re not quite there yet. At the moment, pressure sensors are used in medical equipment like respiratory devices where accurate pressure measurement is critical.Freescale believes that pressure sensors will be increasingly part of the array of sensors (accelerometer, compass, etc…) that smartphones and tablet are loaded with. Xtrinsic MPL3115A2 is low power too. While system on a chip (SoC) often run at 1GHz or more, this pressure sensor runs only at 1Hz in low power mode (1GHz = 1000000Hz) which means that the power drain should be very small.
We’re still far from complete indoor navigation, but with chips just like this one, we could get all kinds of additional information and turn our smart devices into weather stations, altimeters/barometers. What’s for sure is that sensors will be everywhere.
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