For some time now I have observed the Ubuntu dmesg line
[ 10.799981] input: ST LIS3LV02DL Accelerometer as /devices/platform/lis3lv02d/input/input8
and wondered if this was (a) a properly recognized piece of hardware, (b) a feature of my laptop or my Seagate STxxxxxxxx hard disk and (c) what applications might take advantage of it, assuming I can use it.
During the recompile of a debian packaged xen kernel image I am building specifically to work with the Karmic Grub2, Xen Hypervisor and Eucalyptus packages, I had some time to answer all these questions.
The device is part of my HP dv7z laptop, and marketed as HP MDPS (Mobile Disk Protection System), now called HP 3D DriveGuard.
One gentleman, Pascal de Bruijn has an Ubuntu package repository for a small utility hpfall that performs simple disk parking upon freefall detection, in a similar (but less mature) manner to the HDAPS system (hdapsd) built specifically for IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads. So with a quick apt-get install hpfall I am now using my accelerometer to protect my disk drive.
After more googling, and I was able to find an early prototype for using the accelerometer to switch desktop viewports. There’s a linked YouTube video.
The device has been mature in the kernel tree for some time, and is actually sensitive enough that you can detect little taps and simulate a free fall with your hands. The kernel docs are here.
The output can be observed using a
$ cat /sys/devices/platform/lis3lv02d/position
It is also available as a joystick via /dev/input/js0 suitable for use with various games, etc. Neverball, Google Earth Flight Simulator are a couple mentioned however I have yet to try them myself.
Possibly the coolest idea I have heard yet is to use the correlation of Accelerometer readings from a large number of devices to detect earth quakes via the BOINC framework. More on this Stanford University project, the Quake Catcher Network, here. Unfortunately the site seems to be down, and not currently supported in the Debian BOINC project list.
