Dear XDA community,
First I apologize for the long post, if you want to see only my actual question, just skip the next 2 paragraphs.The stuff before is for context on why your help will be so crucial to us!
Friends and I have started a non-profit organization with the aim of bringing Nooks Touch loaded with literature and DIY books to Kenya (the website is readandprosper.org) The idea is to provide children in their last two years of secondary education with choice and easy access to both Kenyan, pan-African, and US/European literature, as well as replace their textbooks with electronic versions. Currently, up to 5 children share a single textbook (generally in bad shape as well). We also would like to include lots of Do It Yourself books to encourage children to learn useful trades (carpentry, irrigation, mechanical repair, etc).
We have made significant progress in our work, identified the school where we will pilot the project, identified the books we'd like to use (though publishers are giving us a hard time; shocker!) etc. Right now, we are working on the monitoring and evaluation plan and are looking into collecting data about the use of the devices by children and professors. This is where the XDA community's help would be crucial!
Our hope is that there is a way to record what books are being read and also basic information about basic reading patterns, like how many pages are being read in sequence vs. just browsing through the book. Do you guys and gals know any way this can be done via a script/app?
I have a pretty good understanding of Android, having rooted and tested lots of roms on my G2x and having done some basic customization work in the guts so I'm OK with a not super simple and easy solution. It would be really helpful for us to understand use patterns and what books have the most value so we can better tailor our approach!
Thank you so much for any suggestions/help!
Depending on how in-depth you wanted the info, this could get complicated.
You'd need to modify the reader.
You'd have to safeguard against logging as read when somebody holds down a side button continuously.
You can look in the Nook and check the content provider content://media/external/docs and see if a book was ever opened.
If you took occasional snapshots of this you might make some sense of reading.
There's also content://com.bn.nook.reader.providers.lastreadingpointprovider/
It's not what you want, but the easiest data that you can get is if people are using Adobe Digital Editions to borrow from libraries.
You can look in C:\Users\Whoever\My Documents\My Digital Editions and see all the books ever borrowed.
Renate NST said:
Depending on how in-depth you wanted the info, this could get complicated.
You'd need to modify the reader.
You'd have to safeguard against logging as read when somebody holds down a side button continuously.
You can look in the Nook and check the content provider content://media/external/docs and see if a book was ever opened.
If you took occasional snapshots of this you might make some sense of reading.
There's also content://com.bn.nook.reader.providers.lastreadingpointprovider/
It's not what you want, but the easiest data that you can get is if people are using Adobe Digital Editions to borrow from libraries.
You can look in C:\Users\Whoever\My Documents\My Digital Editions and see all the books ever borrowed.
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Click to collapse
Thank you for the info Renate!
I think our first interest is in finding out which books are read most often. Number of pages read would be interesting, but as you said, it will be difficult to collect the data without getting a lot of "noise" or some kind of access to the reader's innards.
We are also open to installing a different reader than the Nook standard, like Moon+ or Aldiko (after root of course). Do any of these third party readers provide an API-type access that would enable more extensive data collection? Otherwise we might try to talk to the app makers and see if they might be able to cook up something for us.
The ADE aspect doesn't really work for us, there is no WiFi where the e-readers are going and we will be sideloading all the books.
We'll continue to think about all this. I got one of our refurbished Nook yesterday to play with, and so far I haven't really gone the rooting route just yet, but I think it will be happening pretty soon.
I just wanted to revive this thread on logging how students use their e-readers.
Since my last post, I haven't really been able to find much more information, which is incredible frustrating.
School libraries, public libraries, and so forth are all using or at least beginning to use e-readers and I can't believe that there exist no app or reading software that tracks reading habits or use. I understand there are some privacy issues, but anonymized data would carry incredibly useful information. In our case, we will have multiple kids using each reader, and no log-in so the privacy issues is essentially void. Plus the data will inform what books we should load up on our readers in the future.
Does anybody on XDA have any clue about an app that can collect reading data? I know Moon+ Pro has some reading statistics for example, but do you guys/gals know what data is available?
Related
Hey all-
I am very new to developing (and Java). Currently working on my 2nd android app so be gentle here. Is there a way, or a good work-around to display web-based pdf files with android? Basically I am trying to have one of the buttons in my program pull up a website that happens to be a web-based pdf. I don't believe WebView will support that.
I have tried converting the pdf files to .png but I loose all the resolution I need as I need the user to be able to zoom in and see the detail.
Is there anyway to either host the pdf file on-line as something else and/or convert it to something else to make it available off-line?
Thanks for any help
Just throwing this out there, but why not have the link download the PDF file to the user's phone.
Only downside I see to this is in the even that the user doesn't have a PDF "viewer."
Otherwise, I'm not aware of any real way to display a PDF within the browser.
If someone can work this out, I'd be interested in learning his/her technique as well.
Thanks for the reply- I did think of doing it that way but I didn't want to make use of my app dependent on another app- It sounds like that's what I will have to do though as I have searched high and low without finding a solution. I had wanted to make two versions of the app- in the free version the user would need web access, in the paid version the user could have off-line access.
With Adobe's pdf viewer on the market for free and most new phones coming stock with pdf viewers, I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Is there no graphic format I can convert a pdf to and then host on-line? Thank you again
OREGONMX said:
Thanks for the reply- I did think of doing it that way but I didn't want to make use of my app dependent on another app- It sounds like that's what I will have to do though as I have searched high and low without finding a solution. I had wanted to make two versions of the app- in the free version the user would need web access, in the paid version the user could have off-line access.
With Adobe's pdf viewer on the market for free and most new phones coming stock with pdf viewers, I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Is there no graphic format I can convert a pdf to and then host on-line? Thank you again
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Yeah, I know exactly what you are saying. Having an app-to-app dependency can cause quite a hysteria with users. They'll complain that the app is faulty and rate it 1 star.
My other suggestion would be to screenshot the PDF, page by page, and paste them into Photoshop and save the files as jpg's with the highest resolution. It will definitely take up a lot of your time if you have a lot of PDFs with many pages. Granted, you'll be taking up much more space, and the image will be loading a lot slower but you'll have pretty neat quality.
You'll have to weigh the factors on what you find more important - speed or quality.
If you don't mind me asking, what type of app are you making.
Thanks again- well just a few minutes ago my friend who is a bit more proficient with the whole coding thing came up with an idea that might just work-
he suggested taking the PDF and splitting it up into several different images and just creating an arrow button on the sides or top or bottom (depending on where in the image you are looking) and then applying an onClickListener to the buttons which will call up a different image view, which would be the next corresponding image/area of the pdf. I'm hoping that by cutting the pdf into small pieces like that and saving them as either jpg or png files I can retain the resolution I am after AND host them on-line myself for the free-app and give users the option to download the pdf to their SD card in the paid version- which would make my original idea a possibility.
My app is a program aimed at dirtbiking enthusiasts- surprisingly there is not a lot of crossover between the dirtbiking community and the developing community- I am all alone Ha!
I don't imagine I stand to make a bajillion dollars but learning android and java and actually seeing what I am doing work (sometimes) has been a fantastically gratifying experience. Just wish I had more time to do it- a 4-year-old and 5-year-old + wife + full-time job make it hard. I'm in no hurry though
That sounds fairly similar to what Facebook has on their "Touch" version of their site (touch.facebook.com)
If you view pictures within an album, you'll notice you get the arrows on the bottom left and right to keep switching between pictures.
Sounds like that would definitely work.
Keep me posted on your app. I give you props for even being on your 2nd app, as I've seen many people in your same situation (wife, kids, job) just give up after downloading the SDK.
But yeah, I'm interested to see how it turns out.
Thanks hopefully my vision will come together sooner rather than later. I'll keep you posted
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Just wanted to know what your opinions are on goggles as a business card reading tool. I have read some great reviews about it yet i have tried at least 6-7 different cards and not once has it picked up all of the contact details on it. Has anyone got any advice or tips that might help with the accuracy?
Also, does anyone know how to add a contact field to someone for their personal website address? All i can do so far is put it in the notes section
Thanks in advance guys
For your second question, it looks like you have to do it from a computer. I've added contacts' home pages, and for those I have the option to edit it. For contacts with no website, there is no option using the phone to add or edit one. Looks like you have to do it when logged in to Gmail on your desktop.
Your first question surprised me. Every day I learn something new that I can do with the phone, and that's another one. I knew that I could scan stuff with Goggles, but it never occurred to me to scan a business card. Cool. I use QR codes on the back of mine to make it easier. They work perfectly, but most people I meet don't have them or know what they are. There are a bunch of (paid) business card readers in the market but I bet they do no better than the free Goggles app. All I can suggest is get good lighting for the picture, and if that fails snap a photo to enter it in manually later. OCR still has a long way to go.
that makes complete sense and thanks for taking the time to produce such a comprehensive answer.
Well, I ran several (~30) read tests with the Goggles. I use business card reading quite frequently, both using an OCR program on my PC and using BCR on WinMo phone. Both these solutions do infinitely better than Goggles. Google's product would frequently fail in the OCR process (which can be due to the phone's camera or the business card quality) but it really pisses you off when it recognizes all the words correctly including weird names (I work in the far east sometimes and there are names you can't read in my phonebook) but has no idea that email:[email protected] should go in the "mail" field, and it misses most if not all of the fields in all the cards I used it on. bottom line: useless.
Google Googles vs specialized card scanner
I can't speak on behalf of Google but I believe their intention with Goggles is not necessarily to invest heavily in deep functionality around business cards but rather to provide broad, generally useful analysis of images and as they often do, leave it to others in the ecosystem to provide more elaborate apps.
We are the authors of one such scanning app - scanbizcards - and I can attest that there is a ton of code besides just recognize the characters, to correct OCR mistakes using the business context. Don't forget that a great business card scanner should do more than just scan & add to the address book. We certainly try to do that, providing 27 different features ...
Our app runs only on the iPhone right now, sorry - BUT we have started its port to Android so stay tuned ...
Hi all!
I'm in my final year and we're supposed to do a project which is worth 200 marks overall. Most of us in our field have chosen to develop either android or iphone applications. My group and I have chosen adnroid.
Now, I'm in need of simple ideas for the apps. We have absolutely no idea on how to go about with the process. I've seen lots of people here develop stunning applications here! We're in need of ideas for developing simple apps.. which can be completed in a max of 2-3 months (considering the fact that we don't have any background knowledge on android development/programming. All we know is Java)
I'd initially suggested an automatic mobile credit recharge system, where in the app monitors you prepaid account balance from time to time and recharges the account once the credit falls below a user set value.
Although this seemed interesting at first, it can only be simulated with 2 databases (one for the mobile credit and another for the bank account)
After going through the type of apps here, I really want to develop something much better than this.
I'm open to all ideas, in fact, we don't mind developing an app that is already existing (for instance a profile manager or a data wallet etc) All we want is to have a fully complete app at the end of 2 months.
Please assist.
Thanks!
Secret Santa?
That's something that I thought up over winter break and whipped it up over a few days in the App Inventor. If you guys take your time, you can probably learn Android programming and design/code it in a month or so.
There are some "special" features that I added to make the app more useful but I'll leave that for you to think up.
I'll post back if I come up with anything else. I also need some app ideas, but just for recreational programming.
Thanks! I'm currently checking out appInventer.. I somehow find it hard to come up with ideas which is why I'm trying to find help from here :|
I think the credit recharger is a pretty cool idea, personally. But I understand that you might want something with more "impact"
I think part of the key to this would be figuring out what has not already been done to death. There are so many apps with 5, 6, 7, etc versions of the basically the same thing. I would try to find something to develop with less competition, even if it's more of a niche product. I'm trying to think of the things I've previously thought "I wish I had an app for ____" but I'm drawing a blank right now.
If I think of anything I'll be sure to post it back in here
DrDubzz said:
I think the credit recharger is a pretty cool idea, personally. But I understand that you might want something with more "impact"
I think part of the key to this would be figuring out what has not already been done to death. There are so many apps with 5, 6, 7, etc versions of the basically the same thing. I would try to find something to develop with less competition, even if it's more of a niche product. I'm trying to think of the things I've previously thought "I wish I had an app for ____" but I'm drawing a blank right now.
If I think of anything I'll be sure to post it back in here
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Click to collapse
Thanks! I checked out google appInventer tutorials.. theres one which says "no text while driving" -- basically sends back an sms to the sender that ur driving.. It seems interesting so I'm gonna see how best i can use it and pack some more useful stuff along with it.. and see how it all works out.
The reason why I'm giving the auto recharge a back seat is because it can't be implemented in real time.. it can only be simulated in a virtual environment.
You might want to think about doing something that takes advantage of the maps api. It's easy to do but it looks impressive and might help you get high marks.
A great idea?!
Graphics artist here,
Something I just thought of and just started searching for (literally) when I came across your thread, would be: Using the phone as a touch sensitive.. control for editing software, ie photoshop or paint.net. Basically turn the phone into a touchpad control for a computer.
Just an idea!
mirrorhelix said:
Graphics artist here,
Something I just thought of and just started searching for (literally) when I came across your thread, would be: Using the phone as a touch sensitive.. control for editing software, ie photoshop or paint.net. Basically turn the phone into a touchpad control for a computer.
Just an idea!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This would be great! I'd definitely pay a couple/few dollars for something along these lines if it was user-friendly
Thats a really awesome idea!! Converting the touchscreen into a tablet input for PS or any other photo manipulation software.. But the problem is that I don't know where to begin! :|
This is a college project so the idea isn't to make a unique and sell-able application... it's to demonstrate that you can work as part of a team to make an application from design to completion.
I'd try and think of a fun app (i wouldnt care if it's been done 100 times before) that everyone on your team wants to contribute to. If it's unique, brilliant, if not nevermind you've got some good experience working as a team and making an android app.
I do like the sound of the phone touchpad app, it's been done on iPhone by Logitech but i've not seen something for android. If it helps, http://blog.logitech.com/2010/01/29...-touch-into-a-wireless-trackpad-and-keyboard/ .
There are a ton of them on the market: Gmote, MyRemote, UnifiedRemote, etc.
It might be a good idea to email this developers to get a better picture of what to do.
Problem is that all of those tools rely heavily on WiFi so you'll have to understand networking.
biggler said:
This is a college project so the idea isn't to make a unique and sell-able application... it's to demonstrate that you can work as part of a team to make an application from design to completion.
I'd try and think of a fun app (i wouldnt care if it's been done 100 times before) that everyone on your team wants to contribute to. If it's unique, brilliant, if not nevermind you've got some good experience working as a team and making an android app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bingo!! Which is exactly what my instructor said. I tried out the tutorials on appInventer.. I was toying with the idea of integrating more features into those itself. Is that a good idea? Although the concept is from Google, would it be ok to build on it? i'm particularly interested in "No texting while driving" and "Broadcast Hub" -- both these apps are awesome! Are there any notable features that I can add to make them better.
How about an app for the quick oil change places. It could show your last service and what was done. Show any upcoming maintenance and when your next oil change is due.
Maybe integrate Google Maps to show locations of service centers. Maybe offer a "e-coupon" if they use the app. Pretend they offer online scheduling and maybe show them "2 customers in bay, one waiting" - Estimated wait time 20 minutes" yada, yada
As an "older" programmer with 2 degrees, it's nice to see your college offering the mobile platform as a programming choice. Hell, all we got to write were COBOL and CICS mainframe applications and some semi-cool C++ projects.
Good Luck and Congratulations on getting your degree!!
What about a bluetooth hack to where u would be able to hack into someones phone and use their service for texting and calling. I heard of something like that when i was on my blackberry and was really into it. But it would be nice to get something like that on my Incredible
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
I think it would be a good idea to make an app that uses an existing web api for a popular website, could be facebook, ebay(do they have an api?) etc etc.
It's a good way to learn a lot of aspects of android development, with a useful product as the outcome.
It doesn't matter if there is already an app for that site, think of a different way of using the site on the mobile, and go from there.
I would like to see a program that reads the weather API and reflects the current weather and location on the wallpaper. This app would require graphics design, code to parse the weather feed, writing to the OS. When I was on Windows Mobile there was a skin for Weather Panel that did this but with Android's live walpaper it could be really cool.
Thanks for the ideas you guys! I really appreciate it. Everything seems interesting.. but the problem is we don't know where to begin or how to go about it.
I did the broadcast hub tutorial present in the app inventer page. It turned out good. Is there any way I can add functionality to this itself?
blueren said:
Thanks for the ideas you guys! I really appreciate it. Everything seems interesting.. but the problem is we don't know where to begin or how to go about it.
I did the broadcast hub tutorial present in the app inventer page. It turned out good. Is there any way I can add functionality to this itself?
Click to expand...
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Do all the tutorials and learn the blocks, you can create lots of stuff. There is a app in the market that adds more features to the app inventor, app inventor extender
XDA App
A couple of suggestions:
- A chess PGN editor
- A simple picture/document management app where you take a photo using the camera, add some tags or other info, and save all details in a database. You can also provide search functionality and a viewer to retrieve pictures using the index you've built.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I did some homework on topics and came across this.. A multilingual speech translator.
Talk in a language, it converts the speech to text, translates that text to a target language, and reads the translated text aloud.
Is this feasible? What is the difficulty level?
Also, is it possible to develop a call blocker app? I looked around but wherever I search, I only find fully built apps but not pointers on how to go about creating one by yourself.
Please assist.
I am considering buying one of these but would like to try it out in a store before I buy it. Does anyone know of a US retailer that stocks them?
I am mostly curious about the following things:
1) How good is it for taking notes in college/university classes? Can you rest your palm on the screen while using the stylus?
2) Is there a way to view the notes taken on pdf on a computer?
3) Is it pretty solid feel wise? Or does it feel like it will fall apart after a couple years?
4) How much bloatware comes on it and is it hard to remove via rooting?
5) Does the screen go dark enough for comfortable reading in dimly lit rooms?
Thanks for the info.
the notes are great, I use Quill, as it works nearly perfect, in the app i have turned on pen input only and jot tons and tons of notes all day long.
You can export the notes to various files, while im not sure about PDF there is certainly a format that can be read on your desktop
Like all lenovo products i've had its built to last like an enterprise system should be. as long as you take care of it it will last a long time past EOL
Bloatware isnt too bad, theres still some stuff lenovo managed to get into the system pretty deep (like the status bar wheel widget thing.) but its never bothered me that much as it only comes up at the home screen.
screen brightness works great in dim rooms, i tend to read books by a small lamp in bed most of the time with minimal strain.
I purchased mine from lenovo direct so I dont know about any local retailers.
Thanks for the info. However when I asked about notes on PDFs I should have clarified a bit. I was asking about their PDF viewer that lets you take notes on the PDF document and weather that can be exported to something useful.
Also I thought of one more thing: If I have my notes backed up with something like spideroak, can the notes be converted on a computer? I ask because I am worried about taking a semesters worth of notes on it then having it die and there being no way to read them without getting a new tablet.
FearTheCron said:
Thanks for the info. However when I asked about notes on PDFs I should have clarified a bit. I was asking about their PDF viewer that lets you take notes on the PDF document and weather that can be exported to something useful.
Also I thought of one more thing: If I have my notes backed up with something like spideroak, can the notes be converted on a computer? I ask because I am worried about taking a semesters worth of notes on it then having it die and there being no way to read them without getting a new tablet.
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ezPDF allows you to fill out pdf forms, underline, strikeout, and add freehand drawings as well as circles/squares/etc. It should do what you're looking for.
https://market.android.com/details?id=udk.android.reader&feature=search_result
and if you have the file saved as a pdf on your sd card you should be able to open it with any pdf reader (pc or otherwise).
The quill note taking app he mentioned allows you to export your notes to sdcard pdfs
Thanks for the info.
One last thing: has anyone used connect bot or another ssh client on this? I am curious if the keys on the keyboard folio such as escape quotes tild and whatnot all send the proper characters. I had a bluetooth keyboard for my N1 a while back that sent some weird unicode characters for the quotes making terminal usage very difficult.
https://market.android.com/details?id=berserker.android.apps.sshdroid&hl=en
I have used SSH droid with WINSCP worked like a charm, I'm by no means an experienced user with SSH, i just used it to dig around the file system.
SSH droid is a server for the android device, I am asking about using a client on the android device.
My bad, I left my brain at home today... I will test it for you this evening and let you know if the client works with the keymapping
Cool thanks, I look forward to hearing your results.
Update: I just ordered one, so if its too much of a bother don't worry about testing the connect bot thing. My shiny object syndrome overwhelmed my frugal side. Can't wait to get my hands on it.
It works like a charm tested with Moba SSH home 1.22 and connect bot, all the keys from the folio map properly and I haven't seen anything odd at this point, also SSH'd into a couple of Access points over my VPN at work with the TPT to test as well.
Congrats on the TPT! you're gonna love it!
Unfortunately the keys do not map properly, escape is still connected to "back" in the android os and ctrl is connected to "menu". Does anyone know if there is some way to map these to their proper functions?
Thanks
S
I've been thinking about how all these new apps are out now that would work great on my old NST if only it ran a more recent version of Android. I saw on the old l337 thread that the NST is confirmed to be able to run more adavanced versions, but that we'd have to pull the files from a phone or other, much more powerful device, rendering the resulting ROM pretty much unusable.
Until, that is, the Nook Glowlight Plus and 3 came along. The NG+ and NG3 run Android 4.4.2. 4.4 Android could mean being able to run apps like Overdrive and Libby, without workarounds. And that would be pretty sweet.
Now these are two different devices. I'm having a hard time finding data on the difference between the guts beyond the fact that the newer models have a higher DPI screen. I'd guess they have similar amount of processing speed to preserve battery life, though maybe more RAM.
I did a little googling, and I found this CM11 Mod but it looks like it it fizzled out after getting pretty close.
Do we think this can be done?
Was wondering about this the other day. There are an awful lot of NSTs floating around ebay for US$15 now. It would be fun to be able to breathe a little life into them, if only to use them for displays of calendars, to-do lists, or anything else you can do with more modern android apps
jptiger said:
There are an awful lot of NSTs floating around ebay for US$15 now.
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The NST, NSTG and the first Glowlight used TI OMAP3621 processors.
The Glow2, 3, 4 use Freescale (now NXP) iMX6SL processors.
That's quite a difference.
I don't think that anything would be compatible.
jptiger said:
Was wondering about this the other day. There are an awful lot of NSTs floating around ebay for US$15 now. It would be fun to be able to breathe a little life into them, if only to use them for displays of calendars, to-do lists, or anything else you can do with more modern android apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, I'm going to promise not to look at ebay!!! Three devices are enough, even at that price. But it's very tempting. Too bad the NSTGs are rare as hens teeth and always high priced. Then there is a screen artifact issue. The one I finally got has three, but it's not too bad, I guess.
Other than watching movies or live TV (both of which, admittedly, are actually possible with the NST if you can stand it), it seems to me these devices are still wonderfully versatile. With a minimal installation of GApps you can have all the calendar displays you want, to-do-lists, etc. For some of these applications, there are still apps that work fine. For other uses (you dream it up) it's amazing what can be done with Tasker to create an app that looks like "the real thing". And while the learning curve for Tasker is a little steep, baby steps and lots of online help and examples are available.
The one clear drawback is almost anything that requires a login. The fact that Overdrive has not yet been hacked to address this issue is probably due to a lack of interest from a person with the proper expertise (not me). But really, selecting a library book on Opera Mobile from your local library? I'd sooner slit my wrists. Books can still be downloaded to a PC and then transferred to the NST via Adobe's software (or you can get around the whole DRM issue if you wish). And, you can get mobi format books from most libraries now and they will still magically appear in your Kindle app
That said, having flashed a Nook Tablet with CM 11 (KitKat), I can attest that there are still issues with that less-old Android version. For example, you can't view XDA properly in any browser. You have to go back to an earlier skin which has tiny print and is most annoying. In fact you can't get to some sites at all with any browser. And the OS returns SSL errors for some operations with other apps. So KitKat is no panacea. Even so, I like my Nook Tablet running CM 11. It's an 8 GB version and so has limited RAM and storage. Therefore I have scaled down my usual apps to some essentials and things it is really good at. In fact, it has fewer apps on it than my NST!
Every one of those NSTs on ebay is a treasure. But I'm not going to look!!!!
Renate NST said:
I don't think that anything would be compatible.
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I meant as fas as kernel, various hardware libraries.
nmyshkin said:
Other than watching movies or live TV (both of which, admittedly, are actually possible with the NST if you can stand it), it seems to me these devices are still wonderfully versatile. With a minimal installation of GApps you can have all the calendar displays you want, to-do-lists, etc. For some of these applications, there are still apps that work fine. For other uses (you dream it up) it's amazing what can be done with Tasker to create an app that looks like "the real thing". And while the learning curve for Tasker is a little steep, baby steps and lots of online help and examples are available.
The one clear drawback is almost anything that requires a login. The fact that Overdrive has not yet been hacked to address this issue is probably due to a lack of interest from a person with the proper expertise (not me).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the thorough response! I didn't realize you could do so much! I was envisioning having three mounted on walls in various places in my apartment, one with an interactive Google calendar, one with my to-do list from Any.do, and one with a local transit app that shows if there are delays on specific trains etc. (though I guess that one might wait until we're all using public transit again...) I've never used Tasker before, do you have any suggestions of resources or guides on getting it to replicate any functionality like this on an NST?
nmyshkin said:
Every one of those NSTs on ebay is a treasure. But I'm not going to look!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good luck! Save your money and vicariously help me do stuff with them?
jptiger said:
Thanks for the thorough response! I didn't realize you could do so much! I was envisioning having three mounted on walls in various places in my apartment, one with an interactive Google calendar, one with my to-do list from Any.do, and one with a local transit app that shows if there are delays on specific trains etc. (though I guess that one might wait until we're all using public transit again...) I've never used Tasker before, do you have any suggestions of resources or guides on getting it to replicate any functionality like this on an NST?
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There is only one version of Tasker that will run on the NST/G (check your PM). It is designed to run in the background and execute tasks from shortcuts on the home screen or automatically start a series of tasks based on some trigger (time of day, opening a specific app, connection to WiFi, etc.). I originally used it to automatically start WiFi for apps that needed it. This is definitely a "baby step" idea. I don't use Tasker as a background service any longer. There is a companion app called AppFactory which takes your Tasker routines and converts them into stand-alone apps that anyone can run (with the caveat that either GApps must be installed or else two small Maps library files would need to be copied onto the device--actually this is a dependency for Tasker itself also). You can see many examples of "apps" I have created in this fashion in the last section of this forum. You design your own GUI to fit the NST/G screen. Tasks can vary from a simple activity call to website data scraping and massaging (definitely advanced) and more.
AppFactory will not run on the NST/G. It requires Android 2.2. I have a KitKat device which will run both the ancient version of Tasker and also AppFactory, so after I finish designing and testing the routines on the NST I move all the files over to the KitKat device and compile with AppFactory. The resulting app can be installed on the NST and behaves just like any other app (and does not require the presence of Tasker to run).
A lot of patience is required to get things right, especially if you want a full-screen GUI since Tasker seems to hate screen edges and when you edit a screen containing a near-full-screen image it tends to resize it a little smaller, throwing off other elements. Fixing this requires hand-editing the coordinates in the xml files which describe the scene elements. Also, because the file structure on the NST is not the same as on a KitKat device, references to images have to be edited by hand before (or after) moving files to the second device to compile. For example, "/media/" might need to be changed to "/storage/external_SD/Pictures/" or similar. Also, the touch screen on the NST is not always as responsive as we might like.
Finally, there is one one last fly in the ointment, so to speak. Tasker will not install on FW 1.2.2 for some reason unless it is resigned. When it is resigned, it ceases to interact properly with plugin apps (things like RotationLocker, or Minimalistic Text, as examples). The compiled apps will work properly, but testing on the NST is problematic if you are referencing plugins. On FW 1.2.1 everything works properly. Since I have three devices (gulp) I kept one on FW 1.2.1 to help me with this issue.
There is a Tasker Wiki with many examples, but just Googling will yield all kinds of things. There is a guy (Hollywood Frodo) who created all kinds of videos from the basic to the exotic and I found some of those very helpful. Finally, there is a Tasker Google group where--to judge by my personal experience--no question is too stupid!