Problems/difficulties management¶
Tasks¶
Bluetooth connection
Understanding how BioLib and the corresponding connection Handler worked
Acquisition as a background thread
Real-Time Results Display
After the integration with the database, we had some difficulties in displaying the results in the graphs.
How did we overcome this?¶
- The first step in developing StepNCount was successfully coding a prototype app to connect to the VitalJacket via Bluetooth. This step proved to be more difficult then expected due to our struggle in understanding how the BioLib class and the necessary connection Handler both worked. Our first attempt at resolving this issue involved checking Android Developers' documentation regarding BluetoothClient and BluetoothServer connections and attempting to simply display the IDs of the devices that have been, at some point, connected to the device running the prototype app. After accomplishing this and acquiring a better understanding of bluetooth connections with android devices, we went through the BioLib provided examples to prepare for connecting the actual VitalJacket. After some time trying to implement our own version of the exemplified connection Handler we figured out which portions of code we actually required for our use case and which ones we could discard to simplify not only the overall project but also our understanding of the functionality behind the bluetooth connection. We finally overcame this after a few different versions of the Handler and from then on, Bluetooth was never a problem.
- While we were unable to establish the Bluetooth connection with the Vital Jacket, we developed another simple application with the aim of simulating the acquisition of a database with the cell phone's accelerometer in which whenever the user clicked on the button, the steps taken were saved in a listView displayed in another activity. This application can be found in the Redmine Repository folder under the name db_example, where it will be forwarded to a repository on Github.
- With regards to acquiring background information, we tried several approaches with different methods supplied by the Android Developers website, for example IntentService, DataHelpers etc but settled on a separate class that we called AcquisitionService that uses ForegroundService techniques to achieve tracking of the wanted metrics with the app closed and/or minimized.
