How to run a continuous process

I'm working on an Android app to be used in an experiment we are running in our lab. The application monitors the user开发者_开发知识库s movement using the accelerometers, performs calculations on this data at a regular interval, and writes the results to a file.

I'm currently having a very difficult time trying to find a way to run this process for the 15-20 minutes our trials require without it being killed. Despite declaring applications persistent, trying various service approaches (startForeground(), START_STICKY, ..), etc... I cannot seem to keep the Android OS from deciding to pause or kill my service/process.

I've done some research and the only advice I can find is how to set up your processes to gracefully recover from being killed, however I cannot afford to have gaps in my data and therefore need this process to run continuously.

Could someone point me in the right direction?

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From documentation I get the impression that if you want to have a service that will only be killed in extremely low memory situations you need to:

• startForeground() (you have done that)
• START_STICKY (you tried that too) or START_REDELIVER_INTENT (restarts service if it is killed, but that leaves gaps in your data)
• run all its processing in a separate thread
• use Context.startService() to start service

The only sure way is to have it as a system daemon.

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The best solution I could come up with for my problem is increasing the screen sleep delay on the device to 30 minutes and pray no buttons were pressed during our trials.