Coming Soon - Android Wear Notifications (Updated with Eye Candy)

barx

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Not sure if anyone is already working on this, but here goes.

The new Android Wear devices rely heavily on a notification system. From what I have (briefly) read so far, much of this functionality should already be working with the Notification Builder Library. You will have to update your Android Support v4 package for this to work though.

Very shortly I will start working on adding the Wear specific functionality to the Library. Hopefully I can get the AVD for it working for initial tests. I would really like to test on a Live device but unfortunately I only spare around £60 of the £169 required for a device. We will just have to see how it goes, but I am very keen to get this functionality working and keep B4A working with these new devices that are appearing.

Watch this space...
 
barx

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Please do not get confused, this will NOT allow for apps that run standalone on wear devices. This will be the implementation of the notification system (which I recon will be 70 - 80% of what these devices are used for anyway). Including things like paged notifications, actions (phone only, phone + wear and Wear only so you can have matching or differing between the 2) and support for voice input responses from notifications issued to the wear device. I, personally am rather excited for this functionality and hopefully others will be too. I have had a read over the api docs and as I said, some things should already work as it run atop the notification builder compat. which the notification builder lib was originally based on ;)

Hopefully will get the avd up and running at the weekend to prove my theory.

The stand alone app functionality for wear devices will probably end up being down to someone else to create...
 
aaronk

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barx said:
The stand alone app functionality for wear devices will probably end up being down to someone else to create...
Click to expand...

Hopefully someone can create something for stand alone app functionality as I really like to be able to create a app for it.

Notifications will be good and will be a great start, but I like to have a stand alone app on it as well.


barx said:
support for voice input responses from notifications issued to the wear device.
Click to expand...

Does this mean that you can get the notification on your wear device (watch) and then say "Ok Google, display message in my app" and it will then display the app on the phone ?
( I wonder if you can create your own custom messages even without the notification on the screen? "Ok Google, this is a test" then it will do a custom event based on that phrase? )
 
barx

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aaronk said:
Does this mean that you can get the notification on your wear device (watch) and then say "Ok Google, display message in my app" and it will then display the app on the phone ?
Click to expand...

Essentially, yes. The spoken words from the 'OK Google...' command will be passed to the app on the device as a string in a Intent Extra. Much like current Notification tags.
 
aaronk

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barx said:
Essentially, yes. The spoken words from the 'OK Google...' command will be passed to the app on the device as a string in a Intent Extra. Much like current Notification tags.
Click to expand...
Does that mean you can do this using your phone using the Google Now app and make it trigger things in my app or only using Google wear devices ?
 
barx

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!!!WORLD EXCLUSIVE!!!

Well not exactly as I just shown a few of the guys in b4a chat room first...

Managed to create a Wear device AVD and connect my phone to it. Then I ran the Notification Builder app to try prove my concept.

I am very happy to show the following results below

NBWear.png


So, concept proven. I am 99% sure I can now provide full notification features for Wear devices. I am quite busy with other things relating to my employment, so this won't happen overnight, but I will be putting all my spare time into this.

Watch out for Notification Builder V3.0
 
barx

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Here is some more eye candy...
Notifications with actions. Actions become sideways swipe items. Note the dots ......


NBWearWithActions.png
And the actions
NBWearAction1.png NBWearAction2.png

The different Styles (BigTextStyle, BigPictureStyle and InboxStyle)
NBWearBigTextStyle.png NBWearBigPictureStyle.png NBWearInboxStyle.png
BigPictureStyle changes the background of the screen.

Even Chrono works ;)
NBWearChrono.png
 
barx

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One more to show round faces (Again AVD)

These are strange, it covers part of the data. I had read about this prior to experimenting. The interesting part is that screenshots with B4A are still square...
NBWearInboxStyleRound.png
 
aaronk

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Great News! This is pretty much what I want to do in my app.

I have a wearable watch being sent (LG G Watch) and should get it within the next 1-2 days.
If you want you can send me some beta code and I am more then happy to test it on a real device if you want.
 
aaronk

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Just got my LG G Watch, so now I can't wait to see this notification working on it :)
 
barx

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Update:

I have started working on the Library Update to add Wear specific code.

You can now:
* set Wear only Actions. This lets your phone/tablet and your Wear Device have different actions.
* add Pages to notifications. Pages are in fact other notifications, so in effect, they are stacked.
* apply gravity formatting to the Wear notification. TOP, CENTER_VERTICAL, BOTTOM
* Set a background for the notification on the Wear device. This is kind of alreay in place with BigPictureStyle, but using this method will set the background no matter the style.
* There are a couple of other bits added, but I need to test what they actually do before I can document them, lol.

more coming soon....
 
Periklis Koutsogiannis

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Can't wait to test it on my LG G. My favorite is still the Galaxy Gear 2 since it has dozens more features and its battery lasts 2 days more compared to LG G (and looks nicer).

upload_2014-7-13_12-9-37.png
 
Last edited:
barx

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I now have voice input actions working. Still need to do plenty of testing update the demo app before release.
 
aaronk

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barx said:
I now have voice input actions working. Still need to do plenty of testing update the demo app before release.
Click to expand...
Good Job.

Any chance you can send me a beta version? I have a real device and like to help beta test it with you, since I really want to start developing with it.
 
barx

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aaronk said:
Good Job.

Any chance you can send me a beta version? I have a real device and like to help beta test it with you, since I really want to start developing with it.
Click to expand...

PM me your email...
 
Peter Simpson

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This looks great, you have worked really really really hard and the results speaks for themselves, cheers.

I'm personally not looking for notifications as such at the moment though, but for a way create clock faces, but oh well :)

Your work so far is excellent, I too will be willing to donate to your watch fund, I'm sure I will use those notifications sooner rather than later...

New LG G watches £145 delivered :)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/ol/B00LB2ZQ3C/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=new
 
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