Categories
Android Java Mobile phones programming Solutions work

First steps in Android programming

Last week I finished my first Android application. All through the development stage I had to Google a lot for examples which some were really hard to find (even though you can find reference for everything in the SDK, for me, it’s easier to understand from a code sample).
My mobile company allows you to send 10 free daily SMS through their website, and after that each text message is still half priced, so I decided to take a challenge and create a UI that allows me to send my messages from the phone through the website automatically.
The core of my software was pure java, so even though it wasn’t straight forward to accomplish, I kinda know the material.
The main issues were after – when I got to the android implementation and UI
Here are the issues I needed, and will supply examples for in this post:
(Of course – for you that are more experienced than me with Android development, please forgive if I’m not doing everything ‘by the book’, it’s simply what I could find. So if you have any suggestions or improvement please send them to me or post a comment J )

  • How to find out if there is an active network on the device
  • How to create options menu
  • How to create and clear notification in the notification area
  • How to declare your program as “SMS Sender” (‘Complete action using…’)
  • Taking care of orientation (Landscape and Portrait mode for UI)

Here is the code I ended up using. Hope you find it helpful

Categories
graphics gui programming vision work

Combining Java's BufferedImage and OpenCV's IplImage

java_opencv_imgHi
I recently did a small project combining a Java web service with a OpenCV processing. I tried to transfer the picture from Java environment (as BufferedImage) to OpenCV (IplImage) as seamlessly as possible. This proved a but tricky, especially the Java part where you need to create your own buffer for the image, but it worked out nicely.
Let me show you how I did it

Categories
graphics programming video work

iPhone camera frame grabbing and a real-time MeanShift tracker

i_can_has_meanshiftHi
Just wanted to report on a breakthrough in my iPhone-CV digging. I found a true realtime frame grabber for the iPhone preview frame (15fps of ~400×300 video), and successfully integrated this video feed with a pure C++ implementation of the MeanShift tracking algorithm. The whole setup runs at realtime, under a few constraints of course, and gives nice results.
Update: Apple officially supports camera video pixel buffers in iOS 4.x using AVFoundation, here’s sample code from Apple developer.
So lets dig in…

Categories
graphics Recommended tips Website work

Beef up your presentations with word clouds

friendshipThere’s nothing like a good visualization to deliver your ideas over a presentation. Concise points and breakdowns can only go a certain distance before they become weary, and finally confuse your audience. It’s better to keep them on their toes by spicing up the boring slides every 5 or so page turns.
I found that Word Clouds, a kind-of new visualization concept, have a good trait of focusing the attention over a single word’s associative space. You bold your main word, center it, and scatter the associative words around it. This creates a powerful effect.
I found a nice tool to create these word coulds on-the-fly: Wordle.
The way I did was, get the Wikipedia value of my word, for example “Friendship“, and go to the Edit tab. Copy all the textarea’s contents, and paste it into Wordle’s word cloud creator. Press “GO” and the results are immediate.
You can eliminate the “outliers” – those unrelated words that appear too many times, and layout the cloud as you like to fit your slide.
The down-side with Wordle is that it has no export ability, so I had to take an Alt-PrintScreen screenshot to get my cloud as a picture.
Enjoy!
Roy.

Categories
tips work

Life changing traffic tips

Hi
Morning traffic jams can really bum you out on some days, and most people try to avoid them. But actually doing it takes a bit of practice and a lot of time, so it took me just 3 years to perfect my morning route to work. I think I am now able to shave off between 5 and 20 minutes of traffic every day, depends on how crowded the roads are that day.
On a “light” day these tips aren’t worth much, but on a crowded day (like today) it can really save time and gas. Also, since this is my route to work, and I live in Israel and work in Ramat Ha’hayal Tel-Aviv, the example images are in Hebrew and they help people who need to get to Habarzel street. But the tips are genuine, and can help anyone optimize thier morning route.
OK, so on to the point.