Turn your phone into a tape measure with Moasure
Moasure is an app that turns your phone into a scary accurate tape measure or distance measuring tool if you want to put the time into learning it.
I first saw Moasure at CES 2017. At the time it seemed like one of the cooler little things you could do with the sensors on your phone that hadn’t been exploited. Unfortunately after four days of plodding through CES I was so exhausted I forgot about it.
With their new Moasure One hardware coming out they contacted me about promoting it. As we don’t generally do announcements for things that aren’t for sale I got some review codes for the app and said I’d play with it and mention the Moasure One. Job done.
For basic measurements the Moasure app will get you pretty well. Unfortunately there’s a learning curve. Due to it working off the gyroscope and accelerometer there are ways you have to hold and move the phone to get an accurate reading. Also unfortunately it forced you to watch the training and sometimes the training video doesn’t mark that you’ve watched it.
All this is so you don’t measure incorrectly and scream at them about how horrible the app is that you’re using incorrectly, but the result ends up kind of annoying. Unfortunately I think it needs to be that way unless they want to slap in a chipper talking assistant.
As you’re working with gyroscope and accelerometer, accuracy drops if you tilt or turn the phone. You’ll have to learn how to move the phone to get the app to work like you want it. You’ll also have to measure your case or use the phone naked if you want proper wall to wall measurements.
There’s some work that goes into not carrying around a couple pound tape measure. There’s some learning curve. And when your tape measure is out of a charge you’re pretty much screwed.
Overall though without too much effort you can get up and running and measuring things within five minutes, and it’s pretty neat. Yes, you’ll need to invest at least five minutes of time to not carry a tape measure.
Things I found: if you go a direction Moasure doesn’t expect it will tell you that you went in a direction it didn’t expect, but not till after you’ve placed the phone, and there won’t be accurate measurements. Seems like it could audibly warn you at the start of going the wrong way.
Getting a text or notification during a measure appears to be able to throw it off a bit. Measurements seem good within a half inch when I’m doing them, your phone and accelerometer will probably affect accuracy.
Moasure is available for Android and iOS. It’s $5.99 on either platform, and subject to return/trial policies of each store.
Download: Google Play | App Store
