android

373 Articles

Androidome: Monome For Android

August 16, 2010 by 10 Comments

[Ewan Hemingway] tipped us off about his new Android app, Androidome. This is the first one he’s turned out after going through our Android development tutorials. It combines an app running on his Android 2.1 device with a computer running Max/MSP 5. The two don’t needed to be tethered, they just need to be on the same wireless network. This won’t be the best solution if you’re doing live performances, as the buttons on the screen end up being quite small. But as you can see after the break, it’s a great way to get into working with the Monome interface and decide if you want to build a dedicated physical version of the tool.

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Android Development 101 – Part 6:Getting Ready For Market!

August 10, 2010 by 25 Comments
In this tutorial we are going to cover packaging one of our applications into an .apk file and getting it ready for the Android Market.  After we have completed this tutorial you should be able to use the tools provided in the AndroidSDK to sign your application, put the application on your phone and install it or send it to the Android Market.  These will be great assets to have if you decide to develop applications that you may want to charge for.  This tutorial will also be a change from the normal ones because it will include little, if any, code.

Android Development 101 – Part 5:DroidDraw & Information Tracker Completed

August 5, 2010 by 5 Comments



In this tutorial we are going to cover completing the Information Tracker using DroidDraw to design the layout of this project. This will give you insight into an alternative to the stock layout manager in the eclipse environment and how DroidDraw functions. DroidDraw can be your best friend when designing Android applications or your worse enemy if you don’t know the layout of the application and how it works. This will show you the basics to this program and how to incorporate it into your development process.  This is significantly easier than the previous post but will teach skills on other programs to help development such as DroidDraw.

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Android Controlling Mindstorms NXT

August 2, 2010 by 13 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEVwf6E10M]

Here’s an Android device controlling a LEGO Mindstorms robot. [Josh] and a couple of his colleagues developed software to get both Android 2.1 (video above) and Android 1.6 (video) to work as Bluetooth control devices. The NXT cube is running leJOS, a Java virtual machine, allowing you to program Mindstorms using Java. Although their code is at an early Alpha stage, this shows that it works and is a very welcomed tool for NXT development once they get to a more stable point and release it to the masses.

Super Simple Gaming Controller For Android Or IPhone

July 29, 2010 by 19 Comments

If you’ve got an iPhone or Android device that you use with a Wii remote when gaming, this quick hack will give you the third hand you need to manage all of that hardware. [Syanni85] mounted his Android phone to a Wii wheel for just a few dollars in parts. He ran across the wheel itself at the dollar store, and the phone is held in place using a universal mounting bracket. A small square pad sticks onto the back of any device and mates with a base. He cut off the unnecessary parts of the base and glued it to the back of the wheel.

If you haven’t tried using a Wii remote with your phone yet, find out how to do it with iPhone or with Android.

Android Development 101 – Part 3:Introduction To Databases

July 21, 2010 by 72 Comments

In this tutorial we will be pivoting from our last tutorial on Graphical Elements to start focusing on databases in Android development. The android platform uses SQLite databases in its applications and is one of five data storage options in android development. We will only be focusing on SQLite development in android because it is key to the construction of a workable/functional program. After this tutorial you should be able to implement a SQLite database that you are then able to insert and select items from tables in the database.

For this project we will be creating a Random Quote generator that has you enter quotes or sayings in a textbox and press a button to insert them into the database. We will issue a confirmation toast that allows us to see if the data was entered into the database successfully and the textbox will be blank. If a second button is pressed, the database will be accessed and told to select a random quote from the database to show in a toast on the screen.

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Android Development 101- Part 2:Graphical Elements

July 19, 2010 by 82 Comments

In this tutorial, we will be continuing from where we left off with the “hello world” application.  This time adding a graphical user interface (GUI) and a “toast”. The GUI will consist of a button, textbox and a label. The “toast” will be issued onto the screen when the button is pressed.

Some may wonder what a toast is.  Well, for non-programmers, a toast is a text notification that for the most part is used only to display an error on the screen (I am a big fan of using toasts instead of an alert on the screen as its less intrusive).  For this article we will use a toast to display a message on the screen that will take the text in the textbox and issue a “Hello Greg” onto the bottom of the screen.  After this article completed you will be able to successfully make toast commands, design the layout of the hello world program, and pull text from a textbox.

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