Safety App Of The Week

June 17, 2013 No Comments

Below is our “Safety App of the Week”.  These weekly features are published every Monday.  New apps are tested on Apple iPads and rated from ♥ to ♥♥♥♥♥ (♥♥♥♥♥ is the best).  Prior app of the week articles are archived here.

LuxMeter

Official Description  

“Sometimes you need to measure the illumination intensity on your desktop, in the living room or in the office.  It makes you buy a special luxmeter – the device that most likely you will never need again.  This app allows you to use the camera of your iPhone or iPad to measure the light intensity.”¹

Thumbs Up

• cost is free and there are no distracting advertisements
• no registration or sign in required
• well organized, good navagation, don’t need instructions to use
• easy to read, colorful and visually attractive
• can use either the lens on the front, or the lens on the rear of your iPad to gather the light
• two sampling modes – single sampling mode, or continuous sampling mode
• works equally well in very dim light or very bright light
• measurements are repeatable and consistent
• measurements can be saved for future comparisons
• fun to use
• can be used off-line
• we downloaded and briefly reviewed three other light measurement apps, this one was our favorite

Thumbs Down

• in the USA, we often use “Foot Candles” (fc) as the unit of measure for illumination, this app’s unit of measure is “Lux” (lx).  While it would be desirable if this app would be able to measure in both fc and lx, the conversion from lx to fc is easily done using  this unit conversion app.
• the illumination standards shown in this app are for residential homes – for workplace illumination guidelines click here
• “please note that LuxMeter app is not a replacement for a professional device and should be used for private purposes only.”  If a future study were done that showed this app’s results compared favorably to a professional light meter’s results, we’d increase our overall ratings by 1.5 hearts (♥).

–

Overall Rating

• iPad / iPhone  –  ♥♥♥
• not available for Android

¹ Descriptions courtesy of Apple Inc.

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