Hello, this is my first post to this website so bear with me if i break some unwritten rule. I am attending a fairly large university and after spending over 2 hours wondering around lost on campus yesterday, I have set out to create an app for smart phones (android and OSX) that would function similar to google maps. It wouldn't use GPS, but rather would use a point A to point B approach. Where it would work that you would look at a map of the university and click on where you are and then click on where you want to go and it would give you the shortest route for that destination. Any help with how to do this would be very much appreciated. I am hoping there is a framework some where that I can just lay an image over and insert where the paths are as to avoid doing massive amounts of coding. Like I said, any information would be very much appreciated. :laugh:
There probably should be some kind of framework or library to help you with that, but if I needed to make this quickly I'd just break the map into grid and used Dijkstra or A* pathfinding algorithm.
But that's probably a "quick and dirty" straightforward approach. I think there might be a more elegant solution.
According your task main problem is not how to visualize map. Problem is how to correctly store map data and realization of search path algorithm. Try to search some simple free GIS.
Related
I am attempting to write my first android app - L.A. Fitness. It will allow you to pull data from the L.A. Fitness website (really nothing special) the real feature that I want is a widget that shows last login time information.
Basically L.A. Fitness stores badge scan information on their site. I want to pull this somehow and show it so that I know the last time I signed in. The problem is that I am spending to much time in the gym and it is bad for body building.
I will also have a map inside that pinpoints the location of L.A. Fitness' close by and give directions.
So... My problem is that I do not know how to pull data from the website. I was told that L.A. Fitness would have to have an API but I dont understand why this is necessary for data from the web. I also dont know how to pass credentials so I guess all in all im lost.
really... no one
I personally haven't played with the SDK a lot myself, but your best bet would be some kind of feed that they have. XML or RSS or something like that. This could be easily implemented into a widget.
You could try to crawl the site. Read the HTML pages and interpret that. But this is usually against the TOS. You are usually not allowed to rip data from their pages and use it in your application. You may need written consent from them, otherwise they can sue you.
BR,
Adrian Vintu
Other people tried spidering web pages. You can search for help here
[email protected]
and here
[email protected]
BR,
Adrian Vintu
So, I learned almost everything I know about "adjusting" mobile devices from everyone in the community here at XDA, but this is my first help request.
I'm working on a graduate project designing a model for targeting users based on their demographics, and that demographic's usage trends. I am designing a survey that will hopefully match the empirical data (part i need help with a gathering technique for) within an acceptable deviation.
The piece I need help with is finding a practical solution for pulling data from an android phone into a database for mining. (like if I could export the data from Spare Parts?)
Data I need:
1) device usage time
2) app usage time by app name
3) number of app launches
(basically what spare parts gives you, but if there's more in the logs more data= better!)
Here's the preconditions I have:
1)I have physical access to the device, computer, and any hardware I might reasonably need. No need to do this over the air, but if its practical to do so I'd love some direction.
2) It should be able to pull past usage, like spare parts does. So it's not dependent on a user installing it and then coming back for us to collect results.
3) I'm reasonably sure there won't be, but if there's a way to build a platform independent tool that could collect data from as many major platforms as possible i'd love to hear about it.
Overall I'm looking for brainstorming help, or things like sys logs I don't know about, but coding help would be appreciated as well. HURRAY CROWDSOURCING!
There may even be some grant money come fall for someone interested in solving this aspect of the problem.
Thanks in advance to anyone with a good idea!
~Frogy
Designers, programmers, managers,
Lets say You have an App in which after you have completed a demographic search you are to pick at least 3 Cities that begin with the letters "Mel" from anywhere in the world. The search report display output contains 1,000 cities in no particular order.
Question: How long would it take flipping from page to page on your phone or tablet to locate those 3 Cities that match your criteria?
If you could take the time loss multiplied by the number of similar apps multiplied by minutes wasted multiplied by total number of people using apps like these then you're going to be talking about major league waste of time and effort.
Question: Allow those same cities to be sorted in Ascending order. How long will it take now? You get the picture.
Such an extreme example is to illustrate a somewhat bothersome trend in recent application design. That after a team or individual has gone through all of the time and trouble of creating their masterpiece of an application that they abandon the final phase which involves presentation of their output/display data from in an unruly, unsorted mess thereby doing their clients, customers, fans and themselves a major disservice.
The productivity hit from wasted time can be major.
Designers, programmers, managers please remember that computers are meant to bring order and harmony into our lives not disarray and hardship. Adding suitable sorting controls and filters can help do that in a major way and lends itself under the category of best practices.
The people who use your apps on a day to day basis will be ever grateful for your thoughtfulness.
Your comment appreciated.
T.
Interesting observation/comment.......... a bit convoluted ........
In simpler terms, make an app, make sure you understand how the end user needs it to be laid out vs how you the designer thinks it should be laid out. Remember the end user Always needs to rule this argument if success is the goal
oka1 said:
Interesting observation/comment.......... a bit convoluted ........
In simpler terms, make an app, make sure you understand how the end user needs it to be laid out vs how you the designer thinks it should be laid out. Remember the end user Always needs to rule this argument if success is the goal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's just good app design on any platform... know your user; understand how the user interacts and what the user needs.
Sorry for all of the convolution. I just seized on the pet peeve of the moment and went with it. Sometimes I forget that the very act of software development can be a black art all in itself and the wizards who perform all of the designs are but mere mortals
First, I hope this is the right place where I am posting the question. I am in the fire service and I would like to create an app for droid, that would read a basic text message and display a lookup information from a xls document For instance, the text message would display the address for a call. The app would use the information from the text and display a map page number and a short text phrase (running route to the address). I.e the text message says : House Fire: 101 Main Street. The app would look up that address in the excel document, and display the attached information, which would be 101 Main street: Left of Central Ave, Right on Martin Ave: Map 305. Any ideas on where to start? Or maybe app like this exists already? Thanks in advance!
Hi, it's a very broad question so it is very hard to answer. The answer depends on so many factors:
- Do you have any experience programming?
- Have you experience designing/developing mobile applications?
- Do you specifically need to use xls documents? (what you want is better suited to use built-in maps app. i.e. take the text from the text message, parse it a bit for keywords if you want different actions to be keyed in on, and then pass a search string to the maps app).
If you have no experience with developing mobile apps, I'd suggest going to google and searching for simple mobile development languages and frameworks. Stick to ones which use scripting languages. Or you can go to freelance websites and pay someone to make such an app for you. If its very simple, they shouldn't charge you more than a couple hundred.
slivingston said:
First, I hope this is the right place where I am posting the question. I am in the fire service and I would like to create an app for droid, that would read a basic text message and display a lookup information from a xls document For instance, the text message would display the address for a call. The app would use the information from the text and display a map page number and a short text phrase (running route to the address). I.e the text message says : House Fire: 101 Main Street. The app would look up that address in the excel document, and display the attached information, which would be 101 Main street: Left of Central Ave, Right on Martin Ave: Map 305. Any ideas on where to start? Or maybe app like this exists already? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I am understanding here, you want something that will disperse Calls in the form of app alerts, with the two main purpose being alerting the recipient of the location, and also of the directions to said location... Yes?
to start with, figure out what exactly needs to be done and why and put it in writing
The first step would be to write down exactly what you're looking for this app to do and any other pertinent requirements (needs to work offline, speed requirements, hardware to support, etc.).
What you're describing so far sounds like a service provided by major online map providers such as Google, Bing, etc. If you have an address, you just key it in as a destination, and then if you have the fire station pre-filled in as your departure point, you'll get map directions generated right there. Is this what you're interested in? If so, then you can just open a browser when you receive a message and go to Google Maps or to the maps app directly from the phone and do it there.
If some of the details that you've provided are hard requirements (text message being an incoming SMS, .xls data store, precise data requirements, zero downtime tolerance, very fast response times, etc.) then the best place to start would be finding an acquaintance who can write phone apps (maybe some kid from a local high school or college?) and explain/show what you want done to them in detail and have them estimate how complex this work would be. After than you either hire that person to do the work or pressure them to do it for you as community service .
If you don't have the right people in your network or they're unwilling to do the hard lifting, then you should reach out to a contractor and have it done commercially. It's the same approach: explain what you need done exactly, then get an estimate, etc. Based on what you describe, it shouldn't be too complicated or expensive.
I don't recommend you do it on your own unless you have tons of free time and/or are specifically looking to learn how to write apps. You'll end up spending a lot more time than this project costs on the market, and if you're not really into it, it might seem quite frustrating for what seems like should be a very simple thing.
I am looking for some guidance on whether this can be done and if so how hard would it be.
The company I work for run an engineering competition throughout high schools. There are 6 panels of judges all judging different areas of the competition, they all currently have a paper scorecard for each team that they appoint the marks with I have attached a pdf of one to give you an idea.
We are wanting to move to an electronic system to speed up the process and reduce errors because at the moment we have to compile and enter all the scores it a spreadsheet that calculates the winner so there is a high chance of errors being inputted.
The first option I am looking at is having an Excel spreadsheet for each judging panel and it can be linked to the master spreadsheet so it transposes the results across for us, although it would be nice to have this happening live so judges can see whats happening etc. We are wanting to use android tablets because we can get some cheap good quality ones and also easy for the judges to carry around etc.
The other thought I had was to make an android app specifically for this process and thought it can be better tailored to what we want and should be able to give live updates etc into a database and then import it into a spreadsheet.
My question is can this be done and how easy would it be? I don't have a lot of programming knowledge have played around with HTML and a little bit of java but am keen to learn what ever skills/language needed to do it.
Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
You could probably make a CVS type of program [via any language you know] that sends the values to a database (some sort of SQL would be easiest).
An android app would be cool too. If I have time, I can upload a small app that would be front-end ready and you'd just have to figure out what you'd want to do with the back-end. I could possibly make it export the results to a CVS or a data base type file.
Also, if you want to stick to Excel - you could make a Google Spread and just have everyone load it up on their android and make them contributors. Just make the template and use predefined equations.