Android app book for hardware types

With mobile computing taking off now, much like the personal computer did back in the 1970s and 1980s, are you ready to handle this next wave of technology? I am guessing that you are not as ready as you would like to be and you are probably not alone. I mean, at least there is me and there is you, right?

So my first step in getting prepared was to get an Android phone as there are all these REALLY neat applications available which can make the phone do some amazing things. For example, I was able to turn my phone into a compass, a leveling device, and, amazingly, even a metal detector. What else can it do? The applications are seemingly endless.

As a hardware guy, I am somewhat envious of the software folks -- all they need is a personal computer, and they can write a single application and sell it for $2 the world over and make millions without the concerns of manufacturing hat us hardware folks have to contend with. What is a hardware person to do other than join them? So I decided to do just that. However, I needed a good book to help me develop my first Android application.

The book that I found to do that was Professional Android 2 Application Development by Reto Meir (ISBN: 978-0-470-56552-0). As I like to read all the material in a book that comes before Chapter 1, I was pleased to read in the “WHOM THIS BOOK IS FOR” section that “While knowledge of Java is helpful, it’s not a necessity” and there was no need for “…prior experience in mobile phone development.”

For the most part it was these two key phrases that sold me on the book, but they would later be tested. The book has 15 chapters with the first five covering the fundamentals. Chapter 1 has the classic “Hello, World” first application. The really nice thing about the tools for Android application development, as covered in Chapter 2 of the book, (aside from being free) is that they even include full up emulation of the Android phone on the computer. There is so much useful information in this book, I actually felt my brain stretch!

However, I did run into a snag with step #4 on page 23 as the “details” promised were missing from the text and from the illustration on the next page. Things were resolved when I got to the figure on page 39. The problem that I encountered is that I did not know the syntax to enter a valid “Package Name,” I guess some Java would have come in handy. Now being an old-school programmer I really enjoyed typing the programs from “COMPUTE!” magazine (oops did I just date myself?) as this process enabled me to really learn about programming. The book provides code snippets, with some highlighting, instead of the full code.

Unfortunately, they were not always complete even when gluing prior snippets together. However, the full code was downloadable from the web. Aside from those hangs up, the remainder of the book was insightful.

As a hardware type, I really enjoyed Chapter 14 which covered sensors. The book also goes on to cover other topics that any really neat application would need to do such as connect to the network or other devices wirelessly. For my current project, I was glad for the coverage of Bluetooth. Information about design philosophy has given me a deeper understanding of the operation and the limitations of the platform.

Although the book could have used some more testing—which might have helped me avoid some hiccups along the way-- I would still recommend the book as worth having in your technical library, especially if you plan to join the mobile computing technology wave.

Manny Muro is an electrical engineer alumnus from N.C. State University, who is taking his more than 15 years of industry experience to found his first high-tech company, Digital Data Innovations - DDI, after being  involved in more than six tech start-ups since high school. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon and can be reached via e-mail at manny@ddi-ip.com..