Native Android control client

[harleydude]

Jumbodogs,

In order to disarm/arm the system you will need to collect the digits on the phone then send them to Girder in one event. Once there you can run some Lua to disarm/arm the Elk.

[HTLuke]

I was just giving the variable/tokens architecture some thought, about being able to 'build' a compound parameter by stringing multiple presses together. You'd probably need to type in the number and then hit a 'send' button however...

[rkirmeier]

Glad to see you back! I'm really excited about this application!

[rkirmeier]

Any chance we might get local variable support soon?

[jumbodogs]

I was just giving the variable/tokens architecture some thought, about being able to 'build' a compound parameter by stringing multiple presses together. You'd probably need to type in the number and then hit a 'send' button however...

That would work unless you could tell it before hand how long it should be. That way it just sends after 4 digits or 6 digits ... but adding send key would work if that is easier.

[HTLuke]

I'm coding variable support right now actually, I'd like to have something ready to play with by the end of the weekend. I'm sorta blowing off fixing a few bugs in the newer stuff but I'm too excited about the variables (and something additional, see below) and want to get it out of my head while it's fresh.

Great idea Jumbodogs, and I think I know a few ways you could implement such a thing without too much customization.

Speaking of which, variables have some uses in and of themselves for conditional control, but they're far more powerful coupled with some form of parsing/logic functionality (conditionals, evaluations, etc.) which I had planned on, but hadn't really designed yet. I started to poke around for existing scripting interpreters and found something potentially amazing. Basically an open-source android multi-language script interpreter including lua, javascript, rhino, perl, python and others.

Assuming I can integrate it, it means simple deterministic logic will be trivial, and in your favorite language to boot. Further, this project (SL4A) actually has a robust wrapper around Android APIs inside these languages. That means that Android functionality not wrapped natively as part of Andre would still be accessible through scripting. Everything from SMS send/listen, camera functionality, GPS, etc. is available (see the API reference here: http://code.google.com/p/android-scr...i/ApiReference).

It's a lot to bite off for a weekend, but I'm game to give it a shot!

[quixote]

http://www.promixis.com/forums/showt...highlight=sl4a

Way ahead of ya! lol jk!

[HTLuke]

Haha I should have known it was too good not to have been discovered before. It is the perfect cross-over interface to Tasker too, saves me time from having to do all the intent-oriented stuff we talked about.

[quixote]

I think it's great that you discovered that stuff. I'd say you qualify as a "Girder master".
I'm a little caught up again in trying to get this aquarium project set up, but I will be dedicating some time to Andre just as soon as I have a little more time. I should be able to tie the two together since the aquarium is being monitored/controlled by an Elk system, which is also being monitored/controlled by Girder.
It'll be fun to build an interface for aquarium control and stats!

[HTLuke]

Just an update, since I had hoped to have a new version with variables done tonight. I discovered that my recent re-factoring to improve performance and pave the way for a fully stateful design caused a few big bugs that I uncovered yesterday. The good news is the bugs go away when I make the next/final step toward the fully stateful design, but the bad news is variables/tokens would have to have been coded in such a way as to need to be re-written once that step was taken.

So I decided to freeze the new fun stuff and just finish the re-write. I'm about half-way through already, but I don't know how much time I'll have to work on it this week. I'm targeting Friday or Saturday, and then another two or three days to get variables in place.

The really good news though is that variables/tokens become infinitely more useful when the entire design is fully stateful.