Tag Archives: Android

100%: My first Android app

After three months of development and a lot of highs and lows it’s finally done: Smart Places, an app that toggles WiFi, Bluetooth and sound in dependence of your current location.

I always wanted an app that automatically mutes my Android whenever I’m at the university or that deactivates WiFi whenever I’m leaving home. This idea came up to my mind long time ago, but unfortunately I had no time to accomplish it besides my studies.

However; during the last semester break I teamed up with a good friend of mine – who is also studying computer science – and we decided to give it a chance. Since we are both familiar with Java and had a clear concept about the architecture of the application, we thought it would take two weeks at a max to get it done. By now we are laughing about this estimation all the time because it turned out different. Very different!

We fully underrated the effort to get fimiliar with the Android architecture and its oddities. We loved and hated Android at the same time because it has a lot of cool features and a nice architecture in general, but often the documentation stops whenever things are getting interesting. Moreover there are a lot of time-consuming bugs that let you doubt your own sanity, I already wrote a post about this. In the meanwhile the new semester started and it was hard to find time to finish the first version. That’s why two weeks became three months, but now it’s done and I’m very pleased with it. Sure, it’s not perfect. But it works, is easy to use and not the ugliest app in the market. ;)

Some features:

★ location based WiFi, Bluetooth and sound toggling
★ supports XXL places (multiple cells for a place)
★ use GPS and define a radius around your place
★ create and restore backups of your places
★ status bar notifications with sound (configurable)
★ beautiful widget and UI

Check it out here:

Available in Android Market

We have a lot of ideas for the next milestone and I have to force myself to focus on my studies and not on the app at the moment. Especially because the are already a couple of users and we haven’t made any promotion for it yet.

By now I can say that I have learned a lot during this first stage of the project and that it was worth all the sleepless nights. I’m excited about how Smart Places will develop and the things we will have to cope with in future.

We also set up a website for it, it’s not completely done but we are on it! Check it out: http://www.smartster.de

Dear Android,

I really like you and you have a lot of beautiful characteristics, but sometimes you just behave like a little protodroid and that screws everything up! You fell asleep without a warning and nobody knows why, when and for how long. You need to be a bit more reliable or at least should explain why and when you are doing certain things.

Apart from that there are these tiny little things that drive me crazy because they are annoying and time-robbing. Stop bothering me with stuff like that in future or I have to break up and start something new with these fruiterers from Redmond or Cupertino.

Robo hug,

Leo