Fun with Android

[brad]

I've been having fun writing Android apps

Comments

That's so...

[ariel72]

Lenny von Dohlen in Electric Dreams..

[ydna]

My car sorta does that. It slowly turns on the cabin lights when I approach and lets me open the door. It knows if I'm standing by the trunk and lets me open it. Now I insanely want everything to work that way.

[brad]

Likewise with my Audi. Just wish I didn't have to carry multiple fobs/keys/devices around. Why can't my Android be my car key?

[mjg59]

Mm. What's the battery life hit for doing wifi scanning frequently enough that you don't end up sitting outside (or in the dark) for ages?

[brad]

For now I manually activate the scanning service when I'm on my way home. Right before I get on my motorcycle I turn it on. Then in ~3-5 minutes I'm home and it opens.

In the future I'll make it automatically adapt its scanning rate based on circumstances. (e.g. if it's 4-7pm and it previously saw the google shuttle's wifi, then it lost it, it can assume I just got off the shuttle and am on my way home and start garage door scanning at a much faster rate.....)

[mjg59]

Have you looked into using the Locale API for this?

[brad]

The location APIs? The GPS won't work in my pocket (it barely works ever anyway) and I don't think the wifi/celltower triangulation database has my home APs in it. More reliable to do it by hand.

[interimlover]

what do you use to actually activate the switch that opens the garage?

[brad]

X10 relay.

[interimlover]

rad. It's sad that iPhone doesn't support running background apps... I guess Android will have a leg up here for these kinds of applications for awhile...

[webmaven]

I think you should call it 'Magic Missile' and use it to attack the darkness.

[dossy]

+1. Definitely.