Native Android control client

[vitello]

HTLuke,

The new version works. I needed to reset twice, but now it's stable. The nook buttons look very nice. What do you use to generate your images?

[HTLuke]

Excellent, glad to hear it! Let me know if you run into any other problems.

I'm just using Photoshop for all graphics right now, with a few plugins that I've had for years for texturing and visual effects. I actually created the original set (not 'stone') included with 1.6.6b as a usibility experiment a long time ago, hence the very vivid colors. Considering the drawbacks to an all-touchscreen remote (mostly the lack of tactile feedback) I was testing various ways to compensate by using unique layouts and color choices. This was way back before Andre, on a Nokia N800 and a simple HTML page that triggered Girder functionality.

I created the 'lava rock' buttons a couple of months ago to tone things down a bit for general Andre users because I got a lot of interesting comments on the color scheme.

Hopefully once functionality settles down a bit and I can spend more time working on the manual and tutorial/example scripts I'll also make a few starter themes for people to use with more wide range appeal. Andre of course will use whatever you tell it to and users can create/reuse whatever they want, but I'm sure new users just want to dive in and play with the remote and not have to worry about whipping up or going out and downloading button graphics.

[vitello]

HTLuke,

Just to let you know, I'm finding 1.6.7b a bit unstable. It started reporting no network access and then showing errors about not recognizing image file types. Refreshing made things worse. I ended up re-installing, refreshing, killing a few times and then refreshing a lot. It appears to be stable again for now.

[HTLuke]

That's very strange behavior, I've seen the occasional lack of network access before but never errors about not recognizing file types. When you trigger a refresh, do you see the files being requested in Girder's log window? My first guess is there was some brief connectivity issue and somehow it got a partial file downloaded which appears corrupt to Andre when it tries to load it.

Do you know what Andre was doing when the behavior started? Had it already successfully loaded config.xml and loaded/displayed a page of buttons?

[vitello]

HTLuke

I'm trying to duplicate the problem. I see a pattern now to my problems and I think I was wrong with the error message and the stability issue. What the error message was saying was file not found.
I had seen an error about not recognizing file types on 1.6.6b, but this happened before Andre had loaded config.xml and buttons.

I was playing with the Widget Light Control page. When I pressed a button, say on, I got a No Connection error with Andre saying that it couldn't connect. On looking
closer at the messages I see that your Light Control is meant to connect to ZWave which I don't have. So this is a different type of connection issue.

I am having different problems with most of the Widget page buttons. The Animated Sprite button was giving me the file not found error. I again thought that
this was a network error. It wasn't. I am using the nook images and there is no globalspin image in the nook directory. I copied one in and Andre was happy to
animate it. This button now works, but the label went away. The Change Variable label and the Start Timer labels have also disappeared after I first pushed them.

The lable issues look like a couple of simple bugs. I finished the manual and have started going over config.xml. There is a lot of interesting coding in it.

[HTLuke]

Wow, nice debugging work. I keep forgetting to propogate the globe sprite animation image, I had the same issue a few releases ago.

The disappearing labels is a known issue that I'm still trying to decide how to handle, and honestly I've been too excited to finish getting push notifications fully implemented, since I really think that's one of the killer-app features.

Speaking of which, I finally decided to support cloud messaging as a hosted service. I've created http://www.andreapp.com (the site itself is completely sample content right now) which will ultimately become the place for app support and news and ideally downloads from other users of configs, images, scripts, etc.

But for now, I've been writing the code to handle registration of devices from Andre and the call to send a message into the cloud and down to the device. Within the next day I'll be releasing version 1.6.8b which supports this.

When 1.6.8b is out, the steps to use this feature will be as follows:

1. Go to www.andreapp.com and register for an account, wait for me to activate it
2. Sign into www.andreapp.com and go to www.andreapp.com/get_new_token and generate a new auth token for your account
3. On your device, go into Andre Settings and select 'Push Notifications', check the box 'Enable'
4. Enter the email address used for the account on andreapp.com, a string that uniquely describes the device (e.g. 'Evo1'; just needs to be unique for your account for support of multiple devices per user) and the auth token from the site

Once this is done, you should be registered with Google to receive notifications with andreapp.com as the provider. You can use the following to send messages to your device:

http://www.andreapp.com/send_message?email=<your_registered_email>&token=<auth_token>&devicename=<name_entered_in_andre>&action=setvar&varname=<andre_var_name>&varvalue=<your_new_value>

E.g.:

http://www.andreapp.com/send_message?email=smith@gmail.com&token=124780901:sdg8fy0993hd034j2fed&devicename=Evo1&action=setvar&varname=myfirstvariable&varvalue=Awesome+Button

Just set up Girder to send variables/state which you want to use within Andre through this web service and the changes will hit Andre within a few seconds. Once it's all working I'll write a tutorial on the whole process end-to-end including the Girder scripts.

So keep an eye out for 1.6.8b hopefully no later than tomorrow night!

[vitello]

HTLuke,

You are improving Andre faster than I am learning about it. So I am leaving off asking detailed questions until I can catch up. Some of my earlier questions have already been answered in the thread discussions.

[HTLuke]

Haha fair enough. I tend to work in concentrated bursts, then other things take priority for awhile and I go silent for awhile. Right now though I'm getting closer to an actual market release candidate so I'm eschewing pretty much everything else to get there.

[rkirmeier]

Any idea qhy Andre will not install on Honeycomb? Pops up the app installer but can't push the install button when the warning pops up regarding the services it uses.

[HTLuke]

Andre 1.7.0b is now available:

http://www.andreapp.com/downloads/Andre-1.7.0b.zip

This release is almost entirely about push notification functionality and a few small bugs.

Push notifications are now nicely integrated into Andre's Settings menu, and tie automatically to www.andreapp.com. I have added several tools to the website to help demo and debug push notifications, such as an easy form to fill out to cause button triggers and variable changes.

The steps are pretty much the same from the last post I mentioned, but here they are again:

1. Create an account at www.andreapp.com and wait for activation
2. Click the 'Auth Token' link on the home page and generate a new token
3. Run Andre, go to the Settings page for Push Notifications.
4. Fill in the email address used to register on andreapp.com, a unique name string for the device, and the auth token value from the site.
5. Check the 'Enabled' box and exit the preferences.

If all goes well, the device will register with Google's push services and communicate the details to www.andreapp.com within a few seconds. You should be able to click 'Assign Variable Test' on the andreapp home page, select the device name you entered, give it a variable name/value and click 'Send to cloud' and see it update immediately (most of the time) on the device. If there are any errors, they will display on the form.

If you're using the demo config.xml, bring up the Menu and tap the 'Widgets' button to get the page of test Buttons. Go to the Assign Variable page on andreapp.com and enter 'myfirstvariable' for the variable name and some text for the variable value and click Send. The third button from the bottom should update with that text.

For actual Girder run-time use, see the previous post for the send_message web service formatting to call from Girder (or whatever else you're using to update Andre).


This will likely be the last big feature push for awhile as there are lots of little bugs and clean-up work I'd like to focus on. Also I will start releasing clean tutorial config.xml examples for all the latest features, especially timers, scripting and push notifications.

Let me know if you run into any problems, bugs or anything unclear.