Room Locator App Aabhas Sharma Vinayak Gokhale Yehia Khoja 1 Room Locator App

Main Points: Introduction ▫Hardware ▫Software ▫Resources Choosing an App Initial Design Challenges Faced Revised Design Future Directions 2 Room Locator App

Introduction: Hardware used: ▫Mac and Windows based computers ▫Android based Phone Software used: ▫Android SDK ▫Eclipse IDE for Java EE developers ▫Android Apps created where for the platform Resources: ▫Android developer website: developer.android.com ▫Research on Google and YouTube 3 Room Locator App

Choosing an App: Create an App with a new idea and that is useful With Purdue’s huge campus, it is almost impossible to know where each room in each building is located. Therefore create an app that shows you where rooms in buildings are located 4 Room Locator App

Initial Design: The user inputs the building and room he wants The app uses the inputs to search for a specific floor plan in a certain building The app displays the floor plan on the screen Finally, it highlights the room chosen on the floor plan 5 Room Locator App

Challenges with initial design: Creating and using a database: ▫Insufficient because it will need to store all images for all floor plans ▫It requires a script to search through the database to find the correct image Highlighting the room: ▫We need to store coordinates of the room in the database ▫Use coordinates to dynamically draw a box that covers the room 6 Room Locator App

Solutions for these issues: Upload the floor plan images on a web server The android device can then access the correct website and fetch the correct image from it In addition we upload separate images with highlighted rooms on them Finally when we can get an image of the floor plan with the highlighted room by entering the correct website 7 Room Locator App

Final Design: For taking the inputs ▫Use drop down menus to give the user choices for buildings and rooms ▫After selecting a building and a room, the app creates a string ▫Finally the string is encoded into a URL address that pulls the appropriate image with the highlighted room 8 Room Locator App

Final Design Creating the URL address: ▫The code contains a premade URL address which is missing the building name and room number ▫The inputs are used to fill in the blanks in the URL address ▫The floor is determined through the first digit in the room number ▫Finally the building name and room are concatenated in the URL address 9 Room Locator App

Main Things learned/Things to be kept in mind for next time.. Intent and permissions  For the first half of the semester we couldn’t get the code to pull any data from the internet. Just 3 weeks back we figured out that the permissions for accessing the internet needed to be added through the Android Manifest  This is also what generates the permissions list on a real android phone when an application is downloaded from the market Room Locator App 10

Main Things learned/Things to be kept in mind for next time..(2) Memory leaks, memory leaks, memory leaks  What are memory leaks? - A memory leak or leakage in computer science is a particular type of memory consumption by a computer program where the program is unable to release memory it has acquired.  When it can be caused – Initialize a pointer and don’t de-initialize(not a problem in Java, no pointers!)  Open a file and don’t close it etc. Room Locator App 11

Main Things learned/Things to be kept in mind for next time..(3) While uploading the application to the market, you have to make your license validity at least 50 years You can’t upload an app with the debug license Make sure if you use a new icon in the resources folder it is 48X48 and the format is PNG. Room Locator App 12

Layouts Android supports different sorts of layouts that can be chosen/defined in the XML file Absolute layout provides the most flexibility, linear layout provides a rigid and formal layout Room Locator App 13

Errors in dev. Environment Often a time, the team faced an error when creating a new AVD(Android Virtual Device), there would be no network connection. Troubleshooting – Make sure your computer is connected to the internet. If that isn’t the problem, restart the AVD and that restores the connection(known bug) Room Locator App 14

Future Directions: Provide room to room directions – Ask user present location and desired destination – Draw the path Upload information about more buildings on the web server Enhance the look of the program Double check it for any bugs or memory leaks Publish it in the Android app store! 15 Room Locator App

Latest Updates! Purdue VIP finally has the Android Dev License! We can start publishing our apps, however MAKE SURE there are no memory leaks We have published our app but we downgraded it to 1.6 to test on Aabhas’s phone Also, we have not linked the floor plan images as we were not yet sure about the security implications Room Locator App 16

Screen Shot – Room Locator App Room Locator App 17