How does a pedometer distinguish steps?

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Inspired by a question on pedometers.

My mom has a pedometer from 2013, I think. It can detect steps fairly well and it does not react to shaking. I tried to shake the pedometer as if I’m walking and it recorded nothing.

I have a Xiaomi smart watch and sometimes when I roll around in my bed it detects the movement as walking and adds ~20 steps.

How can a pedometer distinguish walking from shaking?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The sensor it uses is an accelerometer, and you can record the acceleration profiles of multiple people walking and identify what that looks like on a plot, this lets you write software that filters out anything that doesn’t look like steps.

https://aosabook.org/en/500L/a-pedometer-in-the-real-world.html