Enea Android Competence Center works with Scalado and Aptina to Bring Innovative Mobile Phone Camera Technology to Android

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"Scalado is working to revolutionize the quality and enhance the user experience of mobile phone photography. In order to make the largest impact they need to be on emerging platforms like Android," said Per Åkerberg, president and CEO of Enea. "We are pleased that they trusted Enea to deliver a demonstration platform that is critical to their success."

Camera technology is among the most complex in a mobile phone, touching all hardware and software layers. A key part of this project was replacing a legacy image sensor on the development board with an advanced five megapixel sensor from leading supplier, Aptina, which had integrated SpeedTags technology. A team from Scalado, Aptina and Enea ensured the integration of the image sensor, firmware, application software and Android.

"It was a great challenge for Enea to complete and deliver this project in the short timeframe before Mobile World Congress," said Fadi Abbas, CMO/CSO and founder at Scalado. "Enea demonstrated unique skills by integrating the Aptina image sensor hardware and our application software with the Android platform."

"The Scalado SpeedTags Camera Solution greatly enhances the user experience of our five megapixel image sensor for mobile phones, and helps illustrate Aptina's commitment to providing an easy to use camera solution," said Venkat Puntambekar, Director of Marketing, Mobile Imaging at Aptina. "Working with Enea and Scalado to bring this new integrated offering to market on Android was a truly collaborative effort by three technology leaders in the industry."

Enea's Android Competence Center has a focus on the platform and framework level of Android. The professional services teams of Enea have deep knowledge in Android internals, system integration, file systems, device drivers, operator needs, security and tool development. Enea also offers a flexible module-based training that delivers exactly the knowledge required from a simple overview to a five day complete Android seminar.

Using Android to control Lego Mindstorms

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This is a short post on the more entertaining side of Android showing a project that the Enea team in Linköping, Sweden, prepared for an expo. It is a one minute video from the demonstration.

It is two LEGO Mindstorms robots controlled by one HTC Hero Android phone. The Hero is running an Android application written by Enea Linköping that send motor commands to the LEGO brick. LEGO has been kind enough to put a Bluetooth chip in the Mindstorms NXT controller. By using the built in demonstrational Bluetooth commands the NXT brick provides there is no need for an application to be downloaded into the NXT brick.
There was however one obstacle in the limited Bluetooth support in Android OS version 1.5 (not supporting the Bluetooth serial port profile, SPP). Instead we used the wifi capabilities on the phone to send information to an Ubuntu Linux Laptop with a TCP/IP to Bluetooth tunnel (just a raw tunnel, no logic or programming). HTC has been rumored to be releasing Android OS version 2.1 (with Bluetooth) later in february and we hope to be able to put forth a new version that skip the WiFi laptop step.

Video below:

Adding a system server to the Android framework

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package android.os;

interface IEneaService {
  /**
  * {@hide}
  */
  void setValue(int val);
}

core/java/android/os/IEneaService.aidl \

package com.android.server;

import android.content.Context;
import android.os.Handler;
import android.os.IEneaService;
import android.os.Looper;
import android.os.Message;
import android.os.Process;
import android.util.Log;

public class EneaService extends IEneaService.Stub {
  private static final String TAG = "EneaService";
  private EneaWorkerThread mWorker;
  private EneaWorkerHandler mHandler;
  private Context mContext;

  public EneaService(Context context) {
    super();
    mContext = context;
    mWorker = new EneaWorkerThread("EneaServiceWorker");
    mWorker.start();
    Log.i(TAG, "Spawned worker thread");
  }

  public void setValue(int val)
  {
    Log.i(TAG, "setValue " + val);
    Message msg = Message.obtain();
    msg.what = EneaWorkerHandler.MESSAGE_SET;
    msg.arg1 = val;
    mHandler.sendMessage(msg);
  }

  private class EneaWorkerThread extends Thread{
    public EneaWorkerThread(String name) {
      super(name);
    }

    public void run() {
      Looper.prepare();
      mHandler = new EneaWorkerHandler();
      Looper.loop();
    }
  }

  private class EneaWorkerHandler extends Handler {
    private static final int MESSAGE_SET = 0;

    @Override
    public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
      try {
        if (msg.what == MESSAGE_SET) {
          Log.i(TAG, "set message received: " + msg.arg1);
        }
      } catch (Exception e) {
        // Log, don't crash!
        Log.e(TAG, "Exception in EneaWorkerHandler.handleMessage:", e);
      }
    }
  }
}

IEneaService em = IEneaService.Stub.asInterface(ServiceManager.getService("EneaService"));
try {
  em.setValue(7); // Any value would do, really.
} catch (Exception e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
}

Howto setup a android project in Eclipse that access both Java and C/C++ code

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If you follow the instructions on http://source.android.com/using-eclipse you will only have a Java project and will only see the C/C++ project files as 2:nd class citizens without any indexing. I will propose a another solution that will combine the ideas from http://lorinc.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-mix-java-and-c-code-in-singe.html.
1. Copy the already available Java setup

and

as described here:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"? >
           < projectdescription >
               < name > android zoom2 < /name >
               < comment > < /comment >
               < projects >
               < /projects >
               < buildspec >
           ------------------------------- below is added 
                   < buildCommand >
                       < name > org.eclipse.jdt.core.javabuilder < /name >
                < arguments >
                < /arguments >
                   < /buildCommand >
           ------------------------------- end of the added stuff 
                   < buildcommand >
                       < name > org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.genmakebuilder < /name >
                       < triggers > clean,full,incremental, < /triggers >
           ...
                   < /buildCommand >
               < /buildSpec >
               < natures >
                   < nature > org.eclipse.cdt.core.cnature < /nature >
            < nature > org.eclipse.cdt.core.ccnature < /nature >
             < nature > org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.managedBuildNature < /nature >
            < nature > org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.ScannerConfigNature < /nature >
           ------------------------------- below is added 
            < nature > org.eclipse.jdt.core.javanature < /nature >
           ------------------------------- end of the added stuff 
               < /natures >
           ...

Now start eclipse again, now the Java classes are available in "Project Explorer" view and C/C++ files in "C/C++ Projects" view.

One problem remain when you build it will use "make all" and that will not work and need to be changed to "make" this can be done if you right-click on the project and select "Properties"
In the "Properties" window select "C/C++ Build" and click on the "Behaviour" tab and remove "all" from all the places where available.

I still used the java heap enlargement in eclipse.ini from the first link by changing the numbers in eclipse.ini to the numbers below:

The standard eclipse from Ubuntu 9.10 (installed from synaptic) uses this file /usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse.ini you need to be root to edit it e.g.

/Zingo

Enea Whitepaper

The emergence of Android paves the way for new opportunities for the world's mobile phone manufacturers. Learn More. 

Ubuntu 9.10, Java 5 and the Android Open Source Project

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Currently there is an issue with building the Android Open Source project on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, or more specific with the Java 5 support. Java 5 was obsoleted by Sun on October 30 2009 and is not part of the Ubuntu 9.10 distribution. However there is still a need to use Java 5 for building Android since Java6 is not yet supported. There are two methods to get Java5 working on Ubuntu 9.10.

Method 1 - download and install from Sun
This method will let you install the Java5 JDK in a separate directory and add it to the path.
Download the Java5 JDK for Linux from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/5u21/jdk
This is a binary file that you should save to a suitable location like ~/tools
In order to make i executable chmod the file as

and run it

This will install the jdk to the current directory.
To use the JDK5 tools you need to add it first in the path before building the Android Open Source Project

This allows you to remove the JDK5 from the path when not building Android and use the standard Java settings instead.

Method 2 - use the Ubuntu 9.04 repositories to get Java5
This method adds the Jaunty repositories and installs Java5 as the default java setting in the system. Open the sources file (/etc/apt/sources.list) for editing, as root

and add:

save the file and close gedit. Next sync your sources by running

and install

To set the system to use Java 5 you need to update your java alternatives by running

Choose java-1.5.0-sun and you should be done.

Hopefully the Android Open Source Project will build with Java 6 shortly but the above solutions should get you going with platform work on Ubuntu 9.10.

Enea Whitepaper

The emergence of Android paves the way for new opportunities for the world's mobile phone manufacturers. Learn More. 

Train Tracker - our first Android application

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• Show all departing/arriving trains at a specific train station
• Detect and warn for delayed trains.
• Station search with auto complete text
• Follow a train route (all arrival and departure times at all stations) for a specific train
• Filter list of arrivals/departures (e.g. all departures from Lund towards Malmö)
• Save a filter as a favourite. Favourites can be selected directly from the start page.
• Set an alarm on train routes to get notified when the train is delayed.
• Global search for stations and favourites integrated in Google Quick Search Box (Requires Android platform 1.6 or later and that Train Tracker is made searchable in Settings/Search/Searchable Items)

The information presented in the application is downloaded from http://banverket.se/. Unfortunately Banverket was not willing to give us API access which is why our application is parsing HTML in order to get the information. This means that the application is likely to stop working if Banverket decides to change the layout of the webpage. Right now the application works quite well and if you want to try it out you can download TrainTracker.apk here. Keep in mind that the application language is Swedish and it can only show information from Swedish trains and train stations. Here are some screenshots from Train Tracker:


Train Tracker start activity. Search for a station or select one of your saved favourites.


Train Tracker station activity. In this view you will find all arrivals/departures of a specific station.


Train Tracker filter activity. Here you can filter the list of arrivals/departures. Select "Spara Filter" to save the filter as a favourite. Select "Använd Filter" to apply the selected criteria.


Back at the station activity. This time filtered with the selected filter criteria and one of the departures has been expanded. Tapping the "Aktivera alarm" line will schedule an alarm for train 1067. Tapping The "Tåg 1067" line will take you to the train route activity for this train.


Train Tracker train route activity. At this view we display all train stops for a specific train. At the top of the screen a train delayed notification is received.


Global search in Google Quick Search Bar. Search hits from Train Tracker shows up together with ordinary search hits. Search hits gain higher priority in the search result list as they are selected.


/Erik

Enea Whitepaper

The emergence of Android paves the way for new opportunities for the world's mobile phone manufacturers. Learn More. 

Android: Examples of Extending the Framework

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If you are going to allow the user to keep Market on their phone, and are adding any new features, please do this the official way: include your own shared library with the features that applications use, rather than having magic hacks in the framework for them.

• The PlatformLibraryExample code itself which is a sample native library implementing some example platform functionality.
• A java library that interfaces the platform library through JNI and exposes the API:s to applications.
• A sample client application that uses this functionality

It is even possible to create an SDK add-on in order to have the added features easily available when developing applications. We will talk more about SDK add-ons in a later post.

To understand what is in this sample start out by reading the readme file in vendor/sample/frameworks/PlatformLibrary. This file describes the above components in more detail and will also tell you what you need to know in order to test the framework additions on a system.

If you are like us and like to try things out on the platform and work directly with some features that are not currently available in Android it is a good thing to follow these examples. It removes the need for making changes directly in the framework when exploring the possibilities of the platform.

/Mattias

Enea Whitepaper

The emergence of Android paves the way for new opportunities for the world's mobile phone manufacturers. Learn More.