Archive for the ‘iPhone’ Category

Friday Night Robotics – CRAZY stars

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, July 30th, 2010

CRAZY stars

On Friday July 30th, I completed an App that I have been working on that uses openFrameworks to draw points (or combination of points) to the screen. Using openFrameworks is a great resource in case you don’t know the Core Animation APIs too well, but you have experience with other drawing programs, such as Processing.

CRAZY stars

The idea originally started out as a pinwheel application, but somehow evolved into exploding stars.

CRAZY stars

There is also an Open AL layer that creates interesting sound effects as you draw across the screen. Here’s a video of me explaining the App in action!

The App was submitted to the App Store for review on August 1st, so it might be up on August 10th! I will be sure to post an update when it is available. The App will run only on the iPad, and it will be free. You can do an in-app purchase for $0.99 to unlock the customization features.

If there are 1,200 downloads of the App in 3 weeks from when it is released, I will make the code open source under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. You will have to tell all of your iPad friends about the App! ;) ;)

CRAZY stars

Posted in: Art, iPhone, Projects.

KiloWhatt 1.1 on the App Store!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, July 10th, 2010

KiloWhatt iPad

KiloWhatt, the energy management and cost calculator that I created, has been updated to version 1.1 and added to the App Store! This version includes an enhanced interface for the iPad, as well as support for iOS 4. =)

Be sure to check it out at

itunes.com/apps/kilowhatt

!

Posted in: iPhone, Projects.

KiloWhatt iPhone App!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

An App that I’ve been working on for several months now has finally been released onto the App store! It’s called KiloWhatt! The purpose of KiloWhatt is to assist in the general understanding of the relationships between power, energy, usage and cost.

Once these relationships are understood, the ultimate goal is for people to observe which categories they consume the most energy. Decreasing our energy consumption to conserve as much as possible based off of this understanding will be very efficient and effective. As the Law of Conservation of Energy states:
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another”. ^_^

Building this App was definitely a tribute to the incremental development approach. It started off from a simple SQLite3 todo list! I kept adding on more aspects once one thing was working. Though, at one point it did seem like there was more debugging going on than actual development. That’s learning, I suppose. :D

When I was finishing off the App, a lot of time was spent on the design. The table views have nice backgrounds and overlays, so that you don’t get that standard iPhone UI feel when you’re in the App. The App needed something nice so that people can show it off to their friends as something different! ;)

Another thing- the Info tab on KiloWhatt does exactly what the name entails. It gives you more information! There’s sections in there to read about the various components about the App. The info section is definitely a vital part of any App, and I hope that this is more fulfilling than a simple version number and website info page. ;)

Of course, there are still some improvements to be made. These will be coming with version releases. =) Oh yeah, and the little icon for the ‘Electronics’ category intentionally looks like an iMac G4 (haha)!

With that being said, go and check it out on the

App store

and let me know how you like it. =)

Posted in: iPhone, Projects.

iPhoneiPhoneiPhone… (Friday Night *)

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, April 9th, 2010

iPhone

If you’re ever looking for a challenge worth pulling your teeth out, making an iPhone App is a great place to start. Dealing with robots and living in Montreal, I’ve seen my fair share of challenges. Somehow, iPhone Apps are different. It’s overwhelmingly difficult, and oddly enough addicting.

The language, the concepts, everything is completely different from what is seen in languages like Java and C++. I’m starting to understand the concepts much more now. It really clicked once I saw the code of how table view cells are iterated through. In ObjC, things happen because of code that is called somewhere even though you have no idea what is going on. It’s a flowy type of thing- you don’t expect to see for-loops anywhere!

This is how a TableView is iterated through for its contents. In mine, it changes the font on the first and second ones… :P

  1. // Customize the appearance of table view cells.
  2. - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
  3.    
  4.     static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
  5.    
  6.     UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
  7.     if (cell == nil) {
  8.         cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
  9.     }
  10.    
  11.     // Set up the cell…
  12.        
  13.         //First get the dictionary object
  14.         NSDictionary *dictionary = [listOfItems objectAtIndex:indexPath.section];
  15.         NSArray *array = [dictionary objectForKey:@"Countries"];
  16.         NSString *cellValue = [array objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
  17.         cell.textLabel.text = cellValue;
  18.        
  19.        
  20.         if([indexPath row] == 0 && [indexPath section] == 0) {
  21.                 cell.detailTextLabel.text = @"Edit Me\n\crhi";
  22.         }
  23.        
  24.         if([indexPath section] < 2) {
  25.                 UIFont *titleFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Georgia-BoldItalic" size:18.0];
  26.                 [[cell textLabel] setFont:titleFont];
  27.         } else {
  28.                 UIFont *titleFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica-Bold" size:20.0];
  29.                 [[cell textLabel] setFont:titleFont];
  30.         }
  31.        
  32.     return cell;
  33. }

As you can see, it’s abstract. REALLY CRAZY ABSTRACT. Even if you can’t see it, it’s abstract.

I’ve been working on Apps for a large part of time of the day for many weeks now. Usually from 11PM until I get keyboard-faced (around 2AM). Wake up at 6AM and do it all over again! :) It’s a slow and tedious process.

One of the Apps that I’ve been working on for ages now was finally approved. It was rejected three times previously!!! It’s called North Country Now (for a local newspaper), and it has links to their website, Twitter, and a map of the areas that they cover. It also has view transitions and works seamlessly (That’s kinda important)! Click below to go to the App store to download it onto your iPhone/iPod/iPad.

It’s a really simple concept, but it will prove extremely effective for local small-medium sized businesses that want to extend their reach into the next generation. If you’re reading this and want to know how much it costs for your business to have one of these Apps, contact me and I will let you know We worked really hard to make it a fair and equal price. :)

Never give up on a challenge! Give things time, and they will surprise you. =)

Posted in: iPhone, Projects.

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