Data from Hard Drive Protection Sensor??

Hello
I was working with my lennovo's active protection software today. I wanted to change a setting and was shocked to see this neat little gui !! Click on the attachment. Apparently the sensor for the hard disk is REALLY good. As I was turning my laptop back and forth, it sensed and showed the movement in real time with great precision. Kinda spooky even, like looking in some sort of bizarre mirror. Anyway, I couldn't help but think about all the games for the iPhone etc that are based on motion... has anyone ever thought about taking the data from the motion sensor that is [apparently] found in all laptops and doing something cool with it?
Just a thought.

 

It's not in all laptops. It's fairly unique to Lenovo, I believe. Most other sensors don't have those kinds of interfaces, IIRC.

 

I think my Alienware has something called "Free Fall Protection", that senses when the computer is dropped, and it lock's up the HD to prevent damage, but I don't think I have anything like that, which is pretty neat.

 

It's called an accelerometer and used in tons of devices (lots of them in automobiles), pretty cheap too. Not sure how effective it is though if you drop your laptop because by the time it figures it's being dropped and parks the head and turns off the drive, the platters are still spinning when it hits.

 

well clearly it does the job pretty well, I abuse my laptop in all kind of ways, for example I often put it in my backpack and listen to music while I walk or bike. No damage (yet.)

 

The big problem is if the heads bounce on the platter causing damage and perhaps debris so as long as they get ramped off it doesn't matter so much if the platter is still spinning.

There might be quite a few laptops that have the X,Y,Z axis available through the SMBUS but only get used for hard disk protection either because using it both as an input device and protection could be awkward, unless your running a SSD, and/or your more likely to drop the laptop.