Android Basic Alternative

[mackrackit]

Have you been able to write anything useful with it?

[Charlie]

Sure - I've produced a display program for a PIC project that is basically collecting sensor data and sending it by BlueTooth. The Android app reads and displays the data, and saves me carrying a laptop for a task a phone can happily do. I have not hit any real limitations with the language other than my imagination. I did uncover a bug and got a load with a fix within a few hours, which is way better than I'd see with a proprietary product.

All the major constructs are there, and all the smart phone platform advantages are accessible like BlueTooth, WIFI, position/motion sensors, GPS, file reads and writes, etc. as well as graphics tools and text dislay tools, and there are tools to produce standalone apps for distribution in Google Play. I guess my only concern is the double edged sword of open source and GPL - you get lots of code to reuse, but you must publish your source so you might lose any competitive advantage. Perfect for a hobbyist, and still usable commercially with caution.

Not a lot of posts, though, so I'm guessing not a lot of PBP folks are using it - or maybe not even doing Android.

[Normnet]

Does RFO basic include the advanced feature of "Ad Hoc WiFi" or point to point WiFi?

Norm

[Charlie]

Hi Norm. I'm not sure - I have not played with WIFI yet. In general RFOB uses the android/java/linux existing infrastructure to set up physical or transport layer stuff, then uses sockets or defined buffer accesses to move data in and out of those layers. So if your version of Android supports PTP WIFI (I don't think my old 2.3.3 does) you should be able to use it. RFOB really wraps the existing Java and hides the complexity to get you going fast without a huge learning curve.

But I'm pretty much a newbie too... I'm just looking for something that doesn't require me to write a dozen pages of objects to type "hello World" on the screen. B4A is nice for a big collaborative projects, but I don't generally do any of those. RFOB might just serve all of my needs. The manual is quite good. I'm not sure about other language alternatives if they even exist, hence my original post.

[mackrackit]

Not a lot of posts, though, so I'm guessing not a lot of PBP folks are using it - or maybe not even doing Android.

From what I have seen I do not think that there are that many here working with Android.

I am going to try RFOB when I get time. Not sure when that will be though.

[rsocor01]

From what I have seen I do not think that there are that many here working with Android.

Well, I have been using Basic4Android for a while. Unlike Charlie, I do like the fact that the program is object oriented. I think that it been object oriented it makes my life much easier.

Robert

[spcw1234]

I also am using B4A, though only a few simple apps so far. Learning how to make your app work with different screen sizes has been my biggest hurdle. Still having trouble with that I will check out RFO basic. Thanks for the link.

[Tobias]

I have been working with B4A for a couple of months and like it. Now trying to get PIC connected to a BT module to talk in Prefix mode. If any of you guys have experience I would appreciate some input.

I define all variables as BYTES. B4A crashes when it receives the data.

Send_BT:
  Prefix1=0
  Prefix2=0
  Prefix3=0
  Prefix4=4
  RPM1T=34
  RPM2T=65
  RPM3T=232
  RPM4T=45
  debug Prefix1,Prefix2,Prefix3,Prefix4,RPM1T,RPM2T,RPM3T,RPM4T
Return

[spcw1234]

Did you ever get this working with prefix mode? I am struggling with the exact same thing. I can view the data with prefix disabled, but it crashes (doesn't like the prefix) when using prefix mode. Any tips appreciated.