I'm looking to build an app that will restart my device at a specified time, then open up a couple 3rd party apps in sequence and run their feature/s.
For example: I would like to automatically restart my phone at 5am. Then have it open an antivirus app of my choice and run the scan. Then close that app and open up another app and run it's cleaner function.
I have experience coding, but I'm just starting to take a peak into android app development. So, I was wondering if this is something feasible to do.
Any advice would be appreciated!
I am not sure about the starting phone at the desired time, but I am sure you can start applications on boot using "init". Linux systems support that, and android does as well. But it completely depends on your kernel.
Read here about init.d.
Check if your phone's kernel supports init.d. Check here if your phone doesn't have init.d support.
Check Here for running a script at boot. It is quite useful for custom scripts.
Check Here for running scripts/application the application at boot
Create a script according to your needs and I think you would be able to achieve what you are looking for. <- Custom Rules
I would have commented but apparently I can not since I am new here.
I hope I was of some help. Will look into the android starting part and get back to you.
Cheers.
I am making an andriod app using 'andriod for processing lib" of processing (ie. running android mode in processing 2.0.3 and lauching it on my device).
Spacebrew (http://docs.spacebrew.cc) is a easy to use web socket library for processing , also availabel as javascript.
if i run the spacebrew example codes in andriod mode, the app gets launched in my device but doesnt show up in my spacebrew admin. whereas if i run the same thing in my mac, it shows up correctly. guess the websocket communication is not happening while using "andriod for processing". But this is the easiest way to use web sockets. So can anyone help me figure out on how to make spacebrew work in processing (android mode)
this is for my college project. any suggestions on how to get this running please? thankyou in advance
Thanks for pointing me to Spacebrew, didn't know about that!
I've just tested it from Android Mode and it does work, but there is a tiny quirk you might be missing out: permissions!
Normally, if your app uses extra permissions, the application's manifest allows you to use these. In Processing, that's also possible via Android > Sketch Permissions and in the case of Spacebrew, INTERNET is the permission you need enabled, as you can see below:
I just a did a test myself and it seems to work just fine with the amazon hosted demo:
Note that the Spacebrew Processing library uses the java websocket library, but only sets up a WsClient client. You can if you want use this jar in an Android SDK eclipse project and have your Android app act as a websockets server as well, not just a client (just in case this will become handy to you at some point in the future)
What I want to achieve is to capture a current foreground activity and save to bitmap file. I need to handle taking that screenshot in a background service. I have run through many ideas, tutorials that mainly uses invoking getWindow() method and enabling cache. However that approach is useless for me - it is impossible to get reference to the foreground running activity (isn't it?) - using ActivityManager I can get only the name & package of it.
I came across the ASL (https://code.google.com/p/android-screenshot-library/downloads/detail?name=asl-1.2.zip&can=2&q=) which uses "native service" which is available in compiled binary file. Library's wiki note states that you have to start the native "screenshot service" by ADB using pc.
My question is: could it be possible to start that service programmaticaly through java code, something like JNI (using NDK) does?
On a rooted device, you can start the service from Java with
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su")
On custom system, you can start the service from /init.rc.
NDK will not help, anyway. Going C does not compromise the system permissions.
I need to do some menial batch tasks on my phone, and I don't want to jump through all the hoops of making an "app" with a GUI and all that just to do them (the tasks are of the type you'd hack together in BASH in five minutes on a sane system). I can't seem to find any place on the net that explains how to simply make an ordinary program (in any language, but Java is OK if that eases interaction with Android) with access to the Android API that can simply be run by SSHing into the phone and running it as a normal process. No need for an APK package, no need for a GUI, no nothing. This should be the simplest thing in the world, but every example out there seems to be first and foremost concerned with making a GUI and working with Eclipse and the SDK instead of doing the basics first.
Any tips?
(I know this is probably borderline SuperUser, but then again, there's a programming question at the bottom: How do you make an ordinary (Java) program that can be run from the terminal on an Android phone and still use the API?)
Here : Running a shell script on android device using adb
and : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=stericson.busybox&hl=en
and : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=537827
and : http://strawp.net/archive/recipe-for-a-decent-bash-shell-in-android/
and : http://digitaldumptruck.jotabout.com/?p=938
I can't seem to find any place on the net that explains how to simply make an ordinary program (in any language, but Java is OK if that eases interaction with Android) with access to the Android API that can simply be run by SSHing into the phone and running it as a normal process.
That's because it's not especially important to the bulk of Android users or developers.
How do you make an ordinary (Java) program that can be run from the terminal on an Android phone and still use the API?
You are welcome to use the Scripting Layer for Android to write some scripts, but you have limited access to the Android SDK, and they cannot "simply be run by SSHing into the phone". This is supported by the SL4A team.
You are welcome to experiment with the dalvikvm command, though off the top of my head I do not recall whether or not it is available on production devices, and I do not know if it can "simply be run by SSHing into the phone". And, bear in mind that using this is completely unsupported.
You are welcome to write your own C/C++ code for ARM (or whatever CPU architecture your device runs). This "simply be run by SSHing into the phone" but has no access to the Android SDK.
I still cannot believe that that kind of stuff isn't on the first page of every Android development introduction out there.
There are over 200 million users of Android devices. What percentage of those users do you think want to
"make an ordinary program... with access to the Android API that can simply be run by SSHing into the phone and running it as a normal process"? 0.01%? 0.001%? My money is on 0.0001%.
The "first page of every Android development introduction out there" should be focused on stuff that matters to closer to 100% of the user base. You, of course, are welcome to build up your own site focused on this sort of thing, to cater to those users who are interested in creating these sorts of programs.
From http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/blog/day_184__just_wanna_run_something/:
While I already have Android "hello world" executables to try, I have
not yet been able to run them. Can't seem to find a directory I can
write to on the Asus Transformer, with a filesystem that supports the
+x bit. Do you really have to root Android just to run simple binaries? I'm crying inside.
It seems that the blessed Android NDK way would involve making a Java
app, that pulls in a shared library that contains the native code. For
haskell, the library will need to contain a C shim that, probably,
calls an entry point to the Haskell runtime system. Once running, it
can use the FFI to communicate back to the Java side, probably. The
good news is that CJ van den Berg, who already saved my bacon once by
developing ghc-android, tells me he's hard at work on that very thing.
and some specific advices in the comments below:
See http://kevinboone.net/android_nonroot.html for info on where in
the android filesystem you have write, exec ability.
Basically you have these abilities in /data/local from adb shell (and
in debuggable app's folders using run-as with adb shell), and in
/data/data// for each app (for example the terminal emulator's
data dir when using the terminal emulator).
...
http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/blog/day_185__android_liftoff/:
Thanks to hhm, who pointed me at KBOX, I have verified that I can
build haskell programs that work on Android.
http://kevinboone.net/kbox.html:
KBOX [...] gives you the terminal emulator, a
decent set of Linux utilities (supplied by busybox), ssh and rsync
clients and servers, and a few other things. In addition, there are a
number of add-on packages for expanded functionality.
Well, it's just about running an executable on Android, and not about writing an executable that would access Android API...
I can't seem to find any place on the net that explains how to simply make an ordinary program [...] with access to the Android API that can simply be run by SSHing into the phone and running it as a normal process.
An answer, translated from a note by vitus-wagner:
Termux is an advanced terminal emulator plus lots of Unix-like software with command-line interface (in packages managed by APT). Actually, not only CLI (command-line), but also GUI as well (though the GUI software not tried yet).
Unlike the way of the various popular "linux deploy" (which make something like a container, at least a chroot, with things installed into directories according to the traditional filesystem hierarchy), Termux seems to aim at integrating into the host system. For this purpose, it has a plugin, Termux:api which is able to do a lot of interaction with the system: open a file in a native Android app, send an sms, take a picture with the camera, or even say something by means of the system TTS engine.
There are many more addons -- see wiki.
(A side note. An integration like that could be expected--if not from MSYS--from GnuWin32, but there is nothing close to Termux under Windows w.r.t. the degree of integration.
However, for some strange reason, people are asking much more about how to make it more "Linux-like" on the forum, rather than how to use it effectively to solve smartphone-specific tasks...)
A toolkit for cross-compilation is available, so that one can try to package his favorite software.
Actually, it is able to do compilation locally on the device, but it seems not to be able to make a package locally.
Some things to know:
One needs Hacker's keyboard or something similar. One can't live here without Esc, Tab, Control. Or one could try to learn the Touch Keyboard.
vim ran with an encoding different from utf-8, and the Russian letters were displayed incorrectly. So, set encoding=utf-8 had to be written in .vimrc.
ssh to another computer at home couldn't login. The reason was simple: it used the username u0_a95 instead of one's usual username. (One can write User your_username in .ssh/config to permanently "fix" it.)
I'd recommend doing a research on XDA-Developers board
Hy everyone, I'm Korean and a little short on using english so please try to understand if I say things not appropriate.
So, my status is that I have odroid-s.
What I'm trying to do for like month or more is that I want to make android to HelloWorld.
What I want to say is that, on the odroid-s, bootloader part, kernel part is the same but the framework part(which will be android), I'll remove all the android part and replace it with just HelloWorld program. The purpose of this HelloWorld program is to display HelloWorld on the screen.
What I think I discovered is that, as I 'vimdiff' bootlogs between normal bootlog and the one that I removed all the system partition part (which is android system partition part) is that android kernel's init goes on and executes console(/bin/sh), netd(bin/netd), ... and it enables adb and it completes his work.
So my conclusion is, I need to use Linux kernel that is non-modified and modify it for odroid-s, and use that kernel for my HelloWorld program!
What I want to ask is.... Am I doing it right?? T_T
My goal right now is to make HelloWorld come out from this odroid-s device...
Please somebody help me. If anybody don't understand what I wrote plz tell me, I'll fix it.
Thx for reading....
The modifications to the linux kernel are likely to be irrelevant to your goals, so you might as well leave them in place for simplicity.
Your biggest challenge is going to be output - where do you want to send it? If you had one of the devices that has (or can have with the right kernel config) a debug serial port, then it would be really easy to write something triggered by the init script (or even use 'echo' in the script) which outputs your message on that port.
But chances are you want to put something on the screen. This is going to be overwhelmingly more complicated, and perhaps device dependent. The way the android runtime does this for actual apps is going to be way more involved than you probably want to get into.
A more practical approach might be to look at how the boot animation is done. For starters you could just replace it with a static image that says "hello world". Once you can do that, the next step would probably be to find some character generator code. Finally you might want to implement scrolling and other terminal-like features.
As an alternative approach, there are builds of more traditional linuxes for some android devices - debian or ubuntu for example. These may include console implementations capable of displaying on the device screen.
As another idea, if you are flexible about how much of android you would be willing to leave on the device, you could build a version of the android terminal emulator example, modified to be a home screen replacement. You might be able to remove a lot of android components (eventually including the default home screen). Or on a secured device (ie, most consumer devices that haven't been rooted) you could just do the home screen replacement while leaving the actual system unmodified. It wouldn't be secure against users wanting to run other things, but generally the user would interact only with your code.