apex app for droid

[SPotter]

there seems to be a few out there but I am thinking about switching from the iphone to a droid phone but really like the aquanotes app and the ability to turn outlets on and off. What is available on the droid?

[kenargo]

The Android application I am aware of was built by a member here but they made it a pay-for application and per the rules of RC they cannot talk about it in the forum (as it falls under a commercial offering). I don't remember their handle but perhaps someone else does and you can send them a private email.

[SPotter]

Ken, you're web based program allows me to control outlets right?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[HeneryH]

The app is free now so it can be discussed. There was originally a free lite version with no control function and a paid full version but now the full is free.

There are a few bugs as noted in another thread here somewhere. A student group was going to pick it up for a class project but they must have gotten distracted by a keg party :)

Still hoping someone gets interest in Android programming, fixes the couple of bugs and adds new features.

Try to search here for the recent thread with more details.

[SPotter]

thanks henery. I have seen some of the threads and some people seem to have no problems with the app and others are having some. I am wondering if it varies from one phone manufacturer to another.

[HeneryH]

It is really the conditions reported by your controller not the phone. For instance two of the bugs that need to get fixed are:

1) if there are certain characters in the outlet names such as asterisk, dash or quote then my database code craps out. Should be easy to fix but I don't have the time.

2) I wrote the app before people with LEDs and profiles were heavy users. I thought the only states for outlets were auto-on, auto-off, man-on or man-off. Now outlets can have states like PF1 as valid states. That causes my code to crap out. Again, easy fix for someone with energy.

People in these conditions have errors, not necessarily certain phones.

[HeneryH]

BTW, one advantage of the app if you are so inclined is to have a live widget on your home-screen with updated parameters and single-click access to full outlet control in a format suitable for smartphones. I had grand visions for what it could do but it just got to be too much. Plus somehow, I had people calling me on my cell phone at all hours of the night (I'm on the east coast) asking me to walk them through how to set up their home networks to get access to their controller from their phones. They didn't know an IP address from a port number but since they paid $2.99 they wanted me to spend an hour on the phone with them.

It was easier for me to just make it free and available for anyone to make changes.

[SPotter]

i am surprised no one else has jumped on where you have left off. I have outlets named like this....
heater_sump and I am guessing that would be a problem correct? it would be easy for me to remove the dash to make it work.

[HeneryH]

Underscore or space are OK but the dash gets interpreted as NOT in the sql query (or some similar problem). Likewise the asterisk gets interpreted as a wildcard.

[SPotter]

Well I think I am going to switch from apple to droid and see how the app works out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MvM]

I have the app so I can use the widget to see tank params. But, I have my webpage bookmarked and can go to that to make any changes.

[SPotter]

I traded in the apple for a droid and henerey's app works great!!!! no glitches or crashes!

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

[kenargo]

Ken, you're web based program allows me to control outlets right?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Yes, I have a number of versions of web-phone applications, 1 login based (information saved on server) and the other cookie based (information saved in a cookie on your device). There are links to both on my website (kenargo.com).

[SPotter]

thanks Ken. Your site and Henerey's both work great on my new phone! I love the functionality of them both over aquanotes. Great job to both of you!

[fishymann]

I am having no such luck with the app. I can access my apex system using my dyndns account on a computer but when I try on my phone i get "http connection failed" I type in my URL just like I do when connecting via a computer. Any ideas?

[HeneryH]

Can you IM me the output from {your url as entered}/cgi-bin/status.xml .

I can usually debug the problem from seeing the XML code. Also, can you confirm that you can reach your controller from the browser on our phone?

I assume that you mean you can reach your controller from a PC outside the home when you say "on a computer" but you can never be sure.

[Demonic]

I am having the same problem. I can access the account from the dyndns account, but not from the phone. Getting so aggravated. I am persistent though.

[HeneryH]

What do you mean by "from the DynDNS account"? The DynDNS account is just a way to map user friendly names to public IP addresses.

There is no way to access the controller "from" the DynDNS account.

I just want to be clear since I am fielding a ton of IMs and postings on the topic.

If you can't access your Apex from the browser on your phone there are underlying config problems.

If you can get to it from the browser on your phone, then enter the same URL up to but not including the "status.sht" part into the app preference and it should work.

Now, there are some known bugs with the app, and I can work with people on those but make sure you can at least get to the Apex from the browser on your phone or work computer.

[Demonic]

Ok, I must have some underlying problems somewhere. I cant access the account via my phone browser. This is a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be.

[HeneryH]

This is a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be.You are certainly not alone. There are some very challenging concepts to work through to get access to in-home devices from the internet. Much harder to get inbound than outbound! No worries, we'll get you there.

The core concept to grasp is that all devices within the home reside on a private network not accessible from the internet. All Apexs in the world share the same http://apex or http://192.168.1.50 address. So if all are private, how do we do it?

There is one single publicly available IP address for your whole home. You can find your single address by going to http://www.whatismyip.com/. If you hit your address such as http://98.114.243.115 (for me on Fios) which is your single address with incoming connections then your router needs to know which internal home device you really want to connect with. That destination home device could be your XBox, your Apex or any other device. You can configure port-forwarding which is a technical way of saying "any incoming connection requests on my router public address should be forwarded to the Apex".

Once this is done, your inbound connections to your public address should work.

Second item is that your single address is likely hard to remember and might change. DynDNS is a free tool to allow you to assign a human friendly name to your address. My account is http://heneryh.homeip.net

Third item is that incoming web connections on the standard web port #80 are sometimes blocked by ISPs. In this case you need to trick your ISP by using a dummy port in the unassigned range (>1024) such as 8080 or 1080 and route incoming connections on that dummy port (ie http://your.address.net:1080 ) to your desired device such as your Apex. A side benefit of this technique is that you can use your single publicly facing address to actually hit multiple devices within your home by using a different dummy port for each device.

[HndMafia]

Henery, would you mind giving me a little guidance to get your app working again? It used to work flawlessly but somewhere along the way I lost the ability to change outlet status.

[HeneryH]

Henery, would you mind giving me a little guidance to get your app working again? It used to work flawlessly but somewhere along the way I lost the ability to change outlet status.
There is one killer bug in my app that can't be worked around and a few that can. I'm sorry but the non-workaround has to do with outet status that is other than aon , aoff , on or off. The killer is a status like pf1.

workaround'able problems are outlet names containing chars such as * - /

[ReefTeacher]

Henry,

I would NOT say there is no work around for the outlet status PF1 in your app. I have an ACIII and not an apex, so even the web page does not allow a direct change of status to anything more that Auto/Manual ON/Manual OFF. The work around I use is a dummy timer which is directly liked to the pump profile. The code works like this:

If Timer DUM=ON then TNZ PF1
If Timer DUM=OFF then TNZ PF2


etc. When I turn DUM on and off with your app the TNZ pump switches profiles and your app displays the correct profile. So thanks again for my favorite Droid APP!

[HeneryH]

I really wish I had time to keep it going but I can't.

The PFx outlet state and the bad characters are two that are killing me because people keep running into them over and over again.

Your workaround is great ReefTeacher, hadn't thought of something like that.

[HeneryH]

BTW, I vaguely remember one guy recently offering to help but I can't find the PM to reply. I have a hundred PMs in my in-box all with subjects like "Droid App" or "Apex App" :)

I've had a few people offer in the past but none have really followed through.

[gopherspidey]

I did make an offer to help. I just need a list of known issues and a copy of the code. Then I can submit patches back to you.

I also have some ideas of my own to make some improvements. I would also like to get a mobile app section added to the Unofficial guide to help with some of the common questions.

[SPotter]

I've had no issues with the app since going back and editing out the "foreign" characters. I love this app and it blows the app for the iphone away!!!!

[HeneryH]

I did make an offer to help. I just need a list of known issues and a copy of the code. Then I can submit patches back to you.

I also have some ideas of my own to make some improvements. I would also like to get a mobile app section added to the Unofficial guide to help with some of the common questions.I knew I was behind on one person who offered.

Step one is to go to the following web site to download and setup the build environment. http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

Once you can build one of the sample apps, we can move on to this one.

I have plenty of lessons learned on getting the environment up and running so email me once you get started (I'll reply to your IM with my email address). Little things like getting an error on step x and solving it by hitting the "prev" then "next" button on the installer and it magically fixes the error :)

I really enjoy looking at some of the approaches others took, like Ken's W7 app, for ideas on this one.

[110galreef]

so where do we download this app? It sounds like it overall works just fine as long as wel stay away from a few of the Known issues! :-)

[HeneryH]

so where do we download this app? It sounds like it overall works just fine as long as wel stay away from a few of the Known issues! :-)Search the market for "Apex". It used to be first but now is down on like page two or three :)

There used to be a lite and full version with the paid app allowing control. They are both free now so I should probably delete the lite version.

[HeneryH]

Mods, if you see this note, can you please lock the thread? There are two parallel threads going on and it is hard to keep the multiple discussions going.

Respectfully yours,
me

BTW, here is the latest bug list and feature requests. I have a guy expressing interest in taking it on for updates so hopefully it can get back on track. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18683329&postcount=31


Please comment in the other thread since it has the bug-list and to-do.

[110galreef]

nevermind...figured it out

[[WDT]TardFarmer]

By the way Henery, I paid $ for your app when it was purchasable and love it! Thank you for a kick *** app! People should donate for sure.

[Toomnymods]

anyone available to help a retard like me set this up to work on my phone.. im clueless when i comes to networking..

[Toomnymods]

anyone available to help a retard like me set this up to work on my phone.. im clueless when i comes to networking..

got this working thx to this post and russ.. just had to go to the dyndns site to do that to make my ip into a name instead of numbers..

[david00061]

tha app works great for me
thank you