I've heard that the Google Nexus S has RFID capabilities. I'd like to start learning about RFID and programmatically doing things. Where should I start? Good tutorials or code examples are what I'm after. (or hardware if it's not Android I suppose).
Doesn't have to be Android, could be python or java libraries as well. Preference for Android.
I see this as the future, and I want to get in on it :)
Buy a Nexus-S, buy some tags.
Then take a look at the code of the 'Tags' application that comes with android. Play with it, modify it. Write some tags with your own application.
Learn what Ndef is and how you craft your own messages/records. Learn how to use the transceive function to do direct communication to the tags. This will open up a world on it's own (aka you can write-protect tags that are not write protectable by Android itself etc).
All in all that can be done in two weeks. The Android NFC/RFID subsystem is easy to use. Most of the the hard stuff is hidden from you.
Afterwards write your own little application, show it to advertising agencies that do Android apps and get a high payed job. NFC experience is highly sought after at the moment.
Related
I have been trying to look into this and it seems hard to find good solid info. Is there anyone out there that has created any java packages that interact with NFC phones, cards, etc. I haven't been able to find a lot on how NFC works really. I just want to be able to read the id of the phone, or its phone number, when it scans. Any way to do this?
I was reading this:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javame/nfc/
which mentions the package javax.microedition.contactless
but can't seem to figure out how to implement it. I am not great at Java, only in my second semester. This over my head?
The Android has own Java API, which differs from JavaMe. This applies not only to NFC, but also to other areas. The above mentioned API you can use on JavaMe NFC enabled phones like Nokia 6212, some Samsungs and Sagem.
If you plan to use NFC I suggest you to either use the Android - there are 2 widely available NFC phones on the market or Symbian, where is dozens of models already released. The other option is go with RIM BlackBerry.
BR
STeN
Hello I am new to android programming, I haven't started writing the code for my app idea yet but I am in planning and learning the Android OS. I was wondering if there is a way that I could pull data from a site such as a wiki from wikia.com and format it in an android app and how would I go about doing this?
I want to pull data such as the information under the different sections, for example take a band history such as The Beatles, I want to pull the History section, Discography, stuff like that and format it to look good in my app. Is there a way to do this? Thank you in advance.
You have a few options.
APIs
Scraping/reformatting the site
If a website has an API you can simply use that to query the website and get the data you need. If not you'll be forced to download the html and scrape out the relevant information.
Scraping is considered a legal gray and most websites don't appreciate it, especially if you plan on redistributing the content of the site.
I have basic knowledge of Java but have never developed for Android.
A friend asked me for an app that seems easy enough to develop but I would need some help for Android.
All the app needs to do is send a text field (for example license plate number) to a predetermined SQL Server database.
Is this easy in Android as it sounds?
Thanks in advance. Cheers.
Darko.
That should be easy, but does it need to be a full-blown Android application for that?
Sounds like a simple webpage with an input-field and a submit button would do the job as well.
If you're familiar with using databases from Java the task is very simple. Just write the code that sends a string to a database. The exact same code you would use on a desktop Java application will do.
The rest is a matter of defining your user interface and obtaining the string. There is a good basic tutorial you can use on the Android developers web site: http://developer.android.com/guide/tutorials/notepad/index.html.
The number of code lines in the whole application will be in the range of a couple of dozens.
It sounds like you want the license plate information stored in a separate server, but if you also wanted to store some information on the device itself there is a simple Notepad tutorial provided by the Android Developers site that explains how to setup and utilize an SQLite database on the device. This by no means would replace the functionality of a server, but is another Android feature that is at your disposal.
Processing has Android support and it seems to be pretty awesome from my 10 minutes of playing with it. But I would like to make a regular (nongraphics) application like a twitter feed reader or something. So is there something like Processing that can do regular apps? Besides Titanium...
Basically I am looking for anything that will make coding for android easier, processing was so easy to get working that I was very happy with it, but it is for graphics only. Titanium didn't give me the same wow factor and it isn't open so that kind of takes away from it. What other tools are out there?
I'm going to give you the answer you are looking for and some advice.
Processing can do ANY of the things you are thinking about doing. If you want textboxes etc, you can use the Control P5 library. It's great. If you are an expert at Processing and just want to port over your Processing code to android, Processing for android is great.
But that's not what you want to do. You want to write an application. And you want to write it on Android. There are frameworks designed to give you a leg up in writing cross-platform mobile apps, but nothing is going to make writing an android application easier than learning Java and learning how the android stack works. It's actually really well designed and easy to follow once you start grokking "intents" and "bundles".
At the end of the day, you might even want to scale back a little further. Are you trying to write an application that needs to be used without internet access or that uses super special phone APIs? If you aren't, maybe you should try just writing your app as an html5 css3 website.
You can do plenty of input based stuff with processing. The original mouse events work as specified, except pass touches, but you can also access things like pressure and multiple fingers down. The hardware keys are also supported.
I am looking to create a video training program which records videos - via webcam, user screen capture and captures sound. Now the main problem is that I need a cross-platform (mac and windows) solutions.
I know its possible to use flash to record webcam + audio. But its not possible to record the user's screen via flash.
So am wonder if I should use Java (which i believe will work on mac & windows). I do not want to develop to separate versions because of the cost involved in developing two versions.
Please guide me as I am new to this.
Thank you.
UPDATE
Hello again,
I had a look at the following site: www.screencast-o-matic.com or www.screentoaster.com. I see that they have developed a java applet which helps interact with Windows/Mac to record the screen.
I am wondering how to go about developing something like that and integrating it with Flash (for webcam and audio recording).
Is this a better idea?
This is not an answer to your question, but I strongly recommend against using video for educational programmes. Our company delivers university courses on-line, and we long ago learned that video feeds are only effective under particular scenarios. In general, a talking head is a waste of bandwidth. You're much better off to put together a well designed powerpoint presentation, record a voice-over (and edit it!) and then assemble the whole thing as a flash presentation. This is a non-trivial amount of work, but it provides a much more interesting product for the student.
When to use video:
1) When you are demonstrating something dynamic - Mechanics or Chemistry for example.
2) When you are acting out a scenario or case as an illustration -- For example, threat de-escalation techniques for high school teachers.
When you solve the screen recording problem, seriously consider whether you need full motion or if you can get away with stills. Often the motion is distracting, and a still with good voice over can be more effective. (Hint: Replace mouse pointers with something HUGE before recording -- Like Fox did with hockey pucks)
Try CamStudio. I don't know, if it works on Mac, but on windows, it's the best solution I know. It's open source, so you can use it's source code, if you want to :)
If you're looking to build an application that does all of the recording and screen capture itself, then you might consider using Adobe AIR (essentially, Flash running on the desktop) in combination with Merapi. Merapi is essentially a bridge between Adobe AIR and Java. So for example, for your project, you might use Java to handle the lower-level (but still cross-platform) stuff you can't do natively in AIR, and use Merapi to wire the Java application to your AIR UI.
This is by no means a simple project. Lets get that said and out the way. There are open source (and cross-platform) options for each element, but nothing (I know of) that will do everything for you.
I think the "cleanest" option would be to use Flash for webcam and audio, as you said, and run a VNC server to send the screen video... The only closed-platform code will be the VNC launching code. That should be pretty simple to maintain!
That raises a problem because most people are behind NAT firewalls these days. Setting up port forwarding is a pain in the behind. I've used an app called Gitso before which allows people to connect to me and send their desktop to my screen (for tech support). Its VNC-based and all it really does is add another layer on top of the VNC connection so rather than me connecting to them, they connect to me. That makes the whole business of port forwarding a non-issue.
And once you've recorded everything, there's the final issue of syncing it all back together... Might not be so hard.
Well, Camtasia provides the solution to get your problem done. It can record the onscreen activity and also the webcam video and put them in the same player template. Another screen recorder DemoCreator can publish the screen recording as Flash movie, but can not record the webcam.