Recordme: A smartphone application for experimental collections of large amount of data respecting volunteer’s privacy

Abstract

Since the spread of smartphones, researchers now have opportunities to collect more ecological data. However, despite the many advantages of existing databases (e.g., clean data, direct comparison), they may not suit all criteria for a particular experiment, resulting in an unavoidable tradeoff between the gain they provide and the lack of some labels or data sources. In this paper, we introduce RecordMe, an Android application ready to use for the research community. RecordMe allows to continuously record many different sensors and sources and provides a basic GUI for quick and easy settings. Also, a mark up interface is embedded for experiments that need it. Because of the high sensitivity of some data, RecordMe includes features for protecting volunteers’ privacy and securing their data. RecordMe has already been successfully tested on different smartphones for 3 data collections.