1. Android Intents & Sensors
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

2. References
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

3. Intents What are intents?
“An Intent provides a facility for performing late runtime binding between the code in different applications. Its most significant use is in the launching of activities, where it can be thought of as the glue between activities. It is basically a passive data structure holding an abstract description of an action to be performed.”
Example it bridges the need for communication between apps:
Android App1
Android App1
Intent
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

4. Email is a common intent
See the code below for intent:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO); intent.setType("text/plain");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "Subject of ");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Body of ");
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

5. Use Cases
“An Intent is a messaging object you can use to request an action from another app component. Although intents facilitate communication between components in several ways, there are three fundamental use cases:”
Starting an Activity..like a timer within an app
Starting an underlying Service.. Scheduler service
Delivering a broadcast: push a message to a group.
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

6. Lets look at an example
Simple App, that writes the text view to logs, but it can also send to an specified.
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

7. Sensors Android supports a broad category of sensors:
Motion sensors: accelerometers, gravity sensors, gyroscopes, and rotational vector sensors.
Environmental sensors: for air temperature and pressure, illumination, and humidity
Position sensors: orientation sensors and magnetometers.
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

8. Sensor Framework Sensor manager Sensor Sensor event 4/8/2019
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

9. Example code: Accelerometer
Lets explore the code and activity for an accelerometer sensor
The code is available in ublearns.
Download it and open it
Lets review the code and execute the example
If you upload it to your Android phone you can actually see it working.
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019

10. Summary We looked at Android Intent and Android Sensors framework.
These are very powerful features of Android that make it a comprehensive tool/device than just a phone
Get deeper into these two topics for developing apps and also for adding other Intents and sensors.
Automotive domain is a fertile area for exploration in Intents and sensors.
CSE651C, B.Ramamurthy
4/8/2019