Sensors & Thermals

The phone is a sensor platform: accelerometer, gyro, light, proximity, temperature, battery. All accessible via adb dumpsys.

---

sensors

One-shot snapshot of all sensor values:

result = adb(action="sensors")
# → accelerometer (m/s²): x=0.1, y=9.7, z=0.3  (phone is upright)
# → gyroscope (rad/s):    x=0.0, y=0.0, z=0.0  (not rotating)
# → ambient light (lux):  450                    (indoor)
# → proximity (cm):       5                      (nothing nearby)
# → magnetic field:       ...
# → pressure (hPa):       1012                   (sea level-ish)
# → step counter:         14382                  (since last reboot)

thermals

CPU, skin, battery, modem temperatures:

adb(action="thermals")
# → CPU:     67.2 °C  (warm, not throttling)
# → Skin:    35.8 °C  (comfortable to hold)
# → Battery: 32.1 °C  (normal)
# → GPU:     58.0 °C
# → Modem:   41.3 °C

Great for: - Detecting throttling before performance degrades - Warning the user when the phone is overheating - Monitoring during long video recording / ML inference

battery

adb(action="battery")
# → level: 87%, charging: true, temp: 32.1°C, health: good, USB power source

wifi_info

adb(action="wifi_info")
# → SSID: "HomeNet", BSSID: "aa:bb:...", signal: -52 dBm, freq: 5180 MHz

Agent Recipes

Phone state classification

agent("is my phone face-down on the desk?")
# Agent:
#   sensors → accelerometer z ≈ -9.8 m/s² → face-down

Thermal budgeting

agent("""
check thermals every 30s for 5 minutes.
alert me if CPU > 85°C.
""")

Motion detection

agent("""
take a sensors reading now, wait 10s, take another.
did the phone move?
""")
# compares gyro + accelerometer deltas

Ambient-light-aware UX

agent("""
if ambient light < 10 lux, enable dark mode and
drop brightness to 20%.
""")
# → sensors → set_brightness → setting_put dark mode

Limitations

• sensors is a snapshot, not a stream. For continuous data, poll at 1 Hz from your agent loop.
• For high-frequency streams (200 Hz accelerometer) you need a companion APK. See FRONTIERS.md #1.
• Not all sensors are on all devices. Pixels have barometric pressure; many Samsungs don't.

What's Next

• Settings — mutate device state based on sensor readings
• Logcat — stream events for a continuous event loop
• DevDuck — scheduled polling + event bus