Filippo Venuti - Android Development

Music Sync v0.3

2013-06-04T16:40:00.001-07:00

Music Sync

UPDATE - This introduction to Music Sync is based upon the leatest version (v 0.3) available in the Play Store.

Changelog:

Added the automatic creation of playlists to ease the playback of your latest and historical music file! Two types of playlist can be generated:

Full Playlist: This playlist will contain all the music files that are kept synchronized by Music Sync app!
Custom Playlist: This playlist will contain all the music files that are not older than a predefined amount of days with respect to the last synched music file

Music Sync application will enable you to keep all your music (mp3 and m4a files) synced between all your android devices and all your desktop applications, using the dropbox official apps!

This page will introduce you to the basic of functionalities of the app. Once started the application will ask you to connect to dropbox, as shown below:

Moreover the app will also ask you to select the folder in which to download / upload the music

Once did so, you will se the screen below. In this you just need to press the RED dot in the middle to connect the application to your dropbox account.

The Dropbox website / app, will ask you to grant access, as shown below:

Once did so, you are ready to go, and you will finally see the main window of the app:

Here are present 6 possible actions. Let's see them in detail:

Pressing this button you will disconnect the app from your Dropbox account

Pressing this button you will start the analysis of the local music present on the device

Pressing this button you will start to upload the music you have locally to your Dropbox account

Pressing this button you will start to download the music you have already uploaded to Dropbox

Pressing this button will open this online manual

In this settings page you will be able to select the folder in which Musi Sync will search for your music and download your Dropbox music.

Moreover it allows you to provide an extra notification, in the Notification Bar, on Download / Upload event completion. A sample of the notification is shown in the next screenshot:

The other settings are related to the Playlist functionality. In the following will be explained in detail:

Generate Full Playlist: If selected, will trigger the generation of the playlist when a new file is synched. Once selected, you will be able to input the name of the playlist by clicking in the successive element
Playlist Name: This is self-explanatory. You will be asked to insert a name for the playlist (so the one it will be available into any music player)
Generate Custom Playlist. This, similarly to the above, if selected will enable the creation of a custom playlist. Once selected, the last two options will become active.
Custom Playlist Days: This will identify the music that will be made available in this additional custom playlist. In detail, you will be asked to insert the number of days between the most recent music file synched and the oldest one. If you select 2 days as value, in this playlist will be present only those music files that have been synched at most two days before the last music file, e.g. if your last synched file has been downloaded on the 4th of June, in this playlist there will be all the music that has been synched after 1st of June.
Custom Playlist Name. As before, this will be the name of the playlist, that will show up in any media player.

NOTE: The app will execute the synchronization ONLY through the wifi connection

NOTE: The app will follow this logic for the music upload in case of conflicting music files:

If the song is already present in the Dropbox folder, there will be no update
If the song is new, the local song will be uploaded to the Dropbox folder

To identify the files the app will not only look at the filename, but also at its MD5. This ensures that, in case of erroneous file renames, to ensure that two files are equals bit-by-bit. For example, if two files named: Oasis - Wonderwall (with MD5:11111) will no the the same as a file named Oasis - Wonderwall (with MD5: 111112). This means that on Dropbox you will find two different songs.

NOTE: Dropbox file naming conventions:

Music files, in the Dropbox folder, will be saved as:

filename MD5_<MD5hash>.mp3/m4a

COMING UPDATES: (In order of priority)

Auto-Creation of a playlist for the recently downloaded music (of course with the possibility to select the "recently" part) [DONE!]
Enhanced naming convention to avoid the need of MD5 hash string in the Dropbox file
Synchronization Logs
Playlist Support (Creation / Synchronization)
Customizable Music File format to Synchronize

You can download the FREE app clicking the following link!

If you appreciate my work and you would like to contribute to the development, you can offer me a beer through paypal donation!

Meteo Pagnacco (Udine)

2013-04-30T19:25:00.003-07:00

Meteo Pagnacco (Udine)

Oggi vi presento la nuova versione di Meteo Pagnacco (Udine) che include un completo re-design della logica di aggiornamento e della parte grafica.

Per iniziare, la nuova versione è supportata solo dai dispositivi Android 3.0 o superiori. Le versioni di Android più vecchie al momento devono sfruttare ancora la vecchia versione.

Un veloce sguardo alla nuova interfaccia grafica.

MeteoPagnacco (Udine) in landscape

MeteoPagnacco (Udine) in portrait mode

Come potete vedere sono state seguite le linee guide fornite da Google per il design dell'interfaccia. Nel dettaglio, la schermata visualizzata và a sostituire la visualizzazione della Situazione Attuale. Avremo la possibilità di vedere le seguenti informazioni:

Temperatura Corrente, con temperatura massima e minima in grigo
Velocità del vento e direzione
Umidità
Pressione Atmosferica
Rain Rate

Oltre a questi dati viene anche fornita l'ultima data di aggiornamento dei dati.

La schermata principale dell'applicazione è visualizzata di seguito

MeteoPagancco (Udine) schermata principale

In questa schermata sarà possibile navigare tra le possibili visualizzazioni:

Situazione Attuale
Statistiche di oggi
Grafici

NOTA: Attualmente solo la prima visualizzazione è stata migrata alla nuova interfaccia. Le altre saranno re-introdotte a breve.

Oltre a questa re-design della applicazione, c'è stato un completo re-design del widget, che ora è possibile ridimensionare a piacimento. Una preview di questo nuovo widget è visibile nella prossima immagine.

MeteoPagnacco (Udine) nuovo widget

Il widget è stato alleggerito e fornirà:

Temperatura Attuale
Umidità
Velocità e direzione del vento

Se vi interessano maggiori dettagli su come è stato invece aggiornato il metodo di aggiornamento dei dati, e una visione più generale di come vengono reperiti i dati meteo, a breve pubblicherò una guida a riguardo.

Vi lascio il link che potete utilizzare per scaricare direttamente l'app dal Play Store.

Music Sync

2012-08-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

Music Sync

UPDATE - This introduction to Music Sync is based upon the leatest version (v 0.2) available in the market