Android Apps and App Inventor 2 (AI2)
The Android Apps were made using a graphical programming language called App Inventor 2, which was originally developed by Google but passed to MIT. It is free, and is hosted by MIT at http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/. It is based on the graphical programming language called Blockly. The simplest apps are the LightSwitch and PowerBrick apps. To understand AI2, they are the best ones to start with.
I do not know Java so this was the only way for me to create an Android App. If you are interested, there is an outstanding free video tutorial series by Eric Banas - the first lecture is linked at the bottom of this page. It is a very simple language to use. It is relatively easy to set up communication between an app and a Spark Function or Variable.
For the rest of this example I am going to use part of the precipiSTATION app to show how to install a downloaded .aia file and generate an .apk file with your core ID and access token. It is the same for all the .aia files included on this site. You will need to set up an account on the MIT site - it is a cloud based program, including storage of the program.
After downloading the .aia file at the bottom of one of the Android App pages, login to the MIT App Inventor Site, and load the .aia in. You do this by clicking the Projects menu item, and then "Import Project (.aia) from my computer".
The Android Apps were made using a graphical programming language called App Inventor 2, which was originally developed by Google but passed to MIT. It is free, and is hosted by MIT at http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/. It is based on the graphical programming language called Blockly. The simplest apps are the LightSwitch and PowerBrick apps. To understand AI2, they are the best ones to start with.
I do not know Java so this was the only way for me to create an Android App. If you are interested, there is an outstanding free video tutorial series by Eric Banas - the first lecture is linked at the bottom of this page. It is a very simple language to use. It is relatively easy to set up communication between an app and a Spark Function or Variable.
For the rest of this example I am going to use part of the precipiSTATION app to show how to install a downloaded .aia file and generate an .apk file with your core ID and access token. It is the same for all the .aia files included on this site. You will need to set up an account on the MIT site - it is a cloud based program, including storage of the program.
After downloading the .aia file at the bottom of one of the Android App pages, login to the MIT App Inventor Site, and load the .aia in. You do this by clicking the Projects menu item, and then "Import Project (.aia) from my computer".
Then click on the "Blocks" button on the top right to see all the blocks of the program. You will need to locate the blocks below that ask for accessToken and coreID - they will always be in the top far left of the blocks screen (you may have to scroll bar left and up to focus the display there - App Inventor opens at the center location of the blocks). Enter your accessToken and CoreID. You then click on the "Build" menu item, and select that an .apk of the project be built. That will be downloaded automatically to your computer.
Once that is downloaded, email it to yourself as an attachment on a gmail account and install the app from gmail by clicking on the attachment. You will be prompted to enable programs from unknown sources to be installed, but OK it as Android will do this only once, preserving the security setting after install of this app. It hopefully should just work after that. To learn more about App Inventor 2, try this tutorial.