Creating my first Android app, Part 1

I have an android phone (Samsung Galaxy S - model SGH-I896). I love all the app's that can be downloaded, for practically anything purpose you can think of. Google recently came out with an app creator called App Inventor. I created an app for my phone which I find really useful. I was thinking about uploading it to the Android Market, but that would cost me $25. Instead, I'll write some blog post that will be very very boring to any normal person, but maybe some budding programers will enjoy it.

First, you must install App Inventor. This requires a google email address. (These first few steps are going to be pretty sketchy, because since I have now installed everything, I can't remember what to do.) App Inventor is a two-part program. First, it is a web-based app creator which allows you up create the look of your app (images, buttons, text boxes, etc.) Second, it calls a Java program which downloads and runs. This program allows you to program the logic behind your app. Think of them as the clock face and the clock mechanics.

The most difficult part to creating your app is actually downloading and installing all the appropriate drivers for your phone. This took me several days to do. I had to update my phone to the latest android version (2.2). After much google searching, I found all the drivers for my phone (both 32- and 64-bit) and saved them to a directory called c:\drivers\. Everything finally worked.

So you've installed App Inventor and have all the drivers for you phone. Now it's time to start creating an app. (Don't forget to set your phone to development mode in Settings->Applications->Development.)

If you've never programmed before, you may want to stop reading right now. Sorry I didn't put this earlier. Wow, you are tenacious. Next step is to do all the tutorials. These will help you understand how App Inventor works.

The app I created is called VoiceBox. The reason I created it is I haven't found a notepad app I like. Android has voice-to-text and text-to-voice features which I thought would be great for an app. Imagine creating a grocery list by talking, and then play it back to yourself. What? Why would you want to play back a grocery list when it is just as easy to look down and read the list? This is a great question. I'll save it as a note in VoiceBox and play it to myself later.

You will need these components:

• Eight (8) Buttons named ButtonRecord, ButtonCopyToTitle, ButtonCopyToMessage, ButtonPlay, ButtonNoteNew, ButtonNoteSave, ButtonEmail, ButtonPlayNote.
• One (1) ListPicker named ListNoteLoad.
• Four (4) TextBox named TextboxVoice, TextboxTitle, TextboxMessage, TextboxEmail
• One (1) TinyDB named DatabaseNotes.
• One (1) ActivityStarter named AppEmail.
• One (1) SpeechRecognizer named AppSpeechRecognizer.
• One (1) TextToSpeech named AppTextToSpeech.

Drag all these components to the viewer and name them as above. Your app inventor should look like the screen shot below. I've realized these series is going to take several blog posts, so I'm going to leave it here. Stay tuned for more "exciting" slash "incredibly boring" posts in this series!

Go here for Part 2.