Android Sensor Programming By Example

Take your Android applications to the next level of interactivity by exploring the wide variety of Android sensors

About This Book

• Get a thorough understanding of the fundamentals and framework of Android sensors.
• Acquire knowledge of advance sensor programming, and learn how to connect and use sensors in external devices such as the Android Watch, Polar heart rate monitors, Adidas speed cells, and so on.
• Learn from real-world sensor-based applications such as the Pedometer app to detect daily steps, the Driving app to detect driving events, and the Professional Fitness tracker app to track heart rate, weight, daily steps, calories burned, and so on.

Who This Book Is For

This book is targeted at Android developers who want to get a good understanding of sensors and write sensor-based applications, or who want to enhance their existing applications with additional sensor functionality. A basic knowledge of Android development is required

What You Will Learn

• Learn about sensor fundamentals, different types of sensors, and the sensor co-ordinate system
• Understand the various classes, callbacks, and APIs of the Android Sensor framework
• Check all the available sensors on an Android device and know their individual capabilities-for example, their range of values, power consumption, and so on.
• Implement sensor fusion using two or more sensors together and learn to compensate for the weakness of one sensor by using the strength of another
• Build a variety of sensor based, real-world applications such as Weather, Pedometer, Compass, Driving Events Detection, Fitness Tracker, and so on.
• Get to know about wake up and non-wake up sensors, wake locks, and how to use sensor batch processing along with the sensor hardware FIFO queue
• Develop efficient battery and processor algorithms using raw sensor data to solve real-world problems
• Connect to a variety of remote sensors such as body weight measurement and body fat percentage measurement using the Google Fit platform from your Android app

In Detail

Android phones available in today's market have a wide variety of powerful and highly precise sensors. Interesting applications can be built with them such as a local weather app using weather sensors, analyzing risky driving behavior using motion sensors, a fitness tracker using step-counter sensors, and so on. Sensors in external devices such as Android Watch, Body Analyzer & Weight Machine, Running Speed Cell, and so on can also be connected and used from your Android app running on your phone.

Moving further, this book will provide the skills required to use sensors in your Android applications. It will walk you through all the fundamentals of sensors and will provide a thorough understanding of the Android Sensor Framework. You will also get to learn how to write code for the supportive infrastructure such as background services, scheduled and long running background threads, and databases for saving sensor data. Additionally, you will learn how to connect and use sensors in external devices from your Android app using the Google Fit platform.

By the end of the book, you will be well versed in the use of Android sensors and programming to build interactive applications.

Style and approach

A step-by-step and easy-to-follow guide that focuses on utilizing sensors to perform certain tasks. After covering the fundamentals in the first chapter, the book develops the concepts by building a real-world, sensor-based application in subsequent chapters.

Varun Nagpal has been developing mobile apps since 2005 and has developed and contributed to more than 100 professional apps and games on various platforms, such as Android, iOS, Blackberry, and J2ME. Android app development has been his main area of expertise, and he has developed apps for a wide variety of Android devices, such as Android phones, tablets, watches, smart TVs, Android Auto, and Google Glass.

He moved to Chicago in late 2013, and since then, he has become a seasoned mobile architect. He has worked in different roles (mobile architect, technical lead, senior developer, and technical consultant) for a variety of various global clients (Allstate, Verizon, AT&T, Sydbank Denmark, SiS Taiwan, Chams PLC Nigeria, and Nandos South Africa) in order to implement their mobile solutions. He has SCJP (Core Java) and SCWD (JSP and Servlets) certifications from Sun Microsystems and MCP (C#) and MCTS (ASP.NET) certifications from Microsoft. You can find his blogs on mobile technology and white papers written by him.

When he's not working, Varun can be found meditating or playing the flute. He also loves to develop meditation apps and fun games in his free time. He has developed about 40 meditation apps and games available on Google Play and the Apple App Store under the name of Creative Software Studio.