Android app for Emerald Driver Configuration

[ilkeraktuna]

Hi,

This has been asked several times without being addressed.
Maybe with  the Obsidian sound board it was not meaningful but now with the Emerald Led driver it means a lot.
With an Android app we could change color on the go.

Is this already planned ? If not, would it be possible to develop such app ?

Thanks.

[Sarich Belmont]

Unfortunately, this is not the best place to ask this question. With the exception of Deep and Ultra, no one here works for Ultrasabers. You are better off emailing them at [email protected].

[ilkeraktuna]

I know this is not a place where US staff answers questions. But I would also like to understand the demand from the users. Is it only me ? Is it only a few of us who asks for this ?
Or are we a huge community looking for this type of mobile app ?

So, who's with me ?

[FadeToGray]

while I admit it would be convenient, it would also be pretty difficult to do. first you've have to port the program to android, which is difficult enough, and then you'd have to find some way of connecting it. either you'd have a cable from your phone to your saber - and I've never heard of someone using a cable to attatch a peripheral to a phone, instead of a phone to a computer - or you'd have to go wireless, which would require a fairly major alteration to the Emerald driver, and one which could cost you quite a bit of battery life.

and this is before you consider how tricky it'll be to program the whole thing.

as someone who does programming and such, I can tell you that this would be fun, but pretty difficult to do.

as for whether or not the folk at US have plans to give it a go, that you'd have to ask directly.

hope I helped.

[ilkeraktuna]

I am an android maniac. I have about 12 android devices in my household.
First of all, nowadays it is very common to connect usb devices to an android device.
Most of the new android devices support usb otg (host mode) and we can connect several devices to the usb port with host mode similar to a PC.
For example;
Usb disks
Usb connected projectors
Usb 3g modems
Usb keyboard
Usb mouse

From my 12 devices, only 2 of them do not support usb otg.

So there is no hardware problems.
Once a software is designed for android we can use it similar to the pc app.
I am not sure if the software can be pported as is. Most probably it has to be redesigned and simplyfied for a mobile os (android).
But it is not very difficult for a person who has already designed the pc app.

[FadeToGray]

^^^ fair enough, I wasn't aware of that, though I'm not honestly all that surprised. give it a few years and phones'll be doing what computers did a few years ago.

again, while it might not be difficult, it could be fairly time consuming, and differences in programming languages can be an issue.

I'd say it could be done, and it wouldn't be extremely hard, but I'm not sure it's something you'd want to do without a fair chunk of time and/or resources.

like I said, I think it's a good idea, and it's certainly doable, but it wouldn't be a few spare afternoon's work, and it's ultimately down to US whether they do it or not.

good idea though.

man, android's really moving on, huh.

[ilkeraktuna]

Ok. What  I am trying to understand is, are there many people like me who would like an android app for this process.
If we have demand Ultrasabers can address it in one of 2 ways;
- develop the android  app (not more than 1 week for someone who know the protocol used in pc app)
- release the protocol documentation so that any 3rd party developer can develop the app for us (I am sure there are android developers among us - ultrasabers customers)

Of course if there is no demand (or a few demand) then it is not feasible.

[haldir]

I'd b more interested in the program working on a Mac before we make the jump to phones

[ilkeraktuna]

Mac users at least have a workaround, right ?

[Krace]

Mac users at least have a workaround, right ?

Yep, it's called Boot Camp.

Or get a new computer, lol.

I also looked and sadly don't see any 8 inch Windows tablets that have a full size USB port that would allow you to have that portable Windows device and jack your saber in to change colors.

[FadeToGray]

Mac users at least have a workaround, right ?

well, you should be able to run it on a windows emulator.

there should be a few for Mac. I've never looked into it personally, but I'm sure there are some out there. same with linux, or any OS with a windows emulator.

[Vyk]

Ok. What  I am trying to understand is, are there many people like me who would like an android app for this process.
If we have demand Ultrasabers can address it in one of 2 ways;
- develop the android  app (not more than 1 week for someone who know the protocol used in pc app)
- release the protocol documentation so that any 3rd party developer can develop the app for us (I am sure there are android developers among us - ultrasabers customers)

Of course if there is no demand (or a few demand) then it is not feasible.

"1 week" would be an extremely optimistic guess.  Obviously I don't know the code, but I'd guess that it depends heavily on Windows APIs.  The code probably isn't particularly x86-specific, but I don't know that for sure.  A "port" to Android would be essentially a complete rewrite.  I think it would be much easier to make a Windows RT port than an Android port, but I don't see either of those happening.

One thing I'd be very curious about is how narrow of a target Android is.  Windows has APIs in it that date back over a decade; if you developed something for Windows 98, there's a decent chance you could run it under Windows 7 or 8.  Likewise, hardware compatibility tends to be very good; hypothetically, you can run Windows 8 on a 13-year-old Pentium 4 (very slowly).  The same doesn't seem to be true for Android; inability to run current versions of the OS on 2010-era hardware has been widely publicized.  (I'm sorry, but if you're worse at supporting old hardware than Apple, you officially fail at supporting old hardware.)  I don't know about APIs in Android, so I don't know if deprecation and removal would be a concern.

In summary, I suspect that an Android app for Emerald and Obsidian would require both significant development effort and increased maintenance compared to the Windows version.  The gain as a user would be minor; personally, if I'm already carrying one or more sabers, I can find space for a 12" Windows laptop.  I don't think US would see much in the way of return on investment for this; I'd guess most people who want this app would have bought an Emerald and/or Obsidian saber anyway.

That leads me to question for you: how much would you be willing to pay for an Emerald/Obsidian app?

[ilkeraktuna]

"1 week" would be an extremely optimistic guess.  Obviously I don't know the code, but I'd guess that it depends heavily on Windows APIs.  The code probably isn't particularly x86-specific, but I don't know that for sure.  A "port" to Android would be essentially a complete rewrite.  I think it would be much easier to make a Windows RT port than an Android port, but I don't see either of those happening.

One thing I'd be very curious about is how narrow of a target Android is.  Windows has APIs in it that date back over a decade; if you developed something for Windows 98, there's a decent chance you could run it under Windows 7 or 8.  Likewise, hardware compatibility tends to be very good; hypothetically, you can run Windows 8 on a 13-year-old Pentium 4 (very slowly).  The same doesn't seem to be true for Android; inability to run current versions of the OS on 2010-era hardware has been widely publicized.  (I'm sorry, but if you're worse at supporting old hardware than Apple, you officially fail at supporting old hardware.)  I don't know about APIs in Android, so I don't know if deprecation and removal would be a concern.

In summary, I suspect that an Android app for Emerald and Obsidian would require both significant development effort and increased maintenance compared to the Windows version.  The gain as a user would be minor; personally, if I'm already carrying one or more sabers, I can find space for a 12" Windows laptop.  I don't think US would see much in the way of return on investment for this; I'd guess most people who want this app would have bought an Emerald and/or Obsidian saber anyway.

That leads me to question for you: how much would you be willing to pay for an Emerald/Obsidian app?

I am not a developer but I know a little about the Android SDK and I have written (very simple) network apps (for self use) for Android.

I never said that a port would be easy from Windows. I don't think so. Here's what I wrote on that:

Code:

I am not sure if the software can be pported as is. Most probably it has to be redesigned and simplyfied for a mobile os (android). 

But a new app for Android would not be that much trouble. It would be just about sending some commands (which we don't know) through the USB port.
A simple app would be just getting 4 values (1 for each led between 0-255)  from the user and sending appropriate commands for the Ultrasaber Emerald driver through the USB port. If I knew the commands used in the original windows app, I would be able to develop such simple app in less than a month. (well because I am not a skilled/experienced developer)

So, to your question:

Code:

how much would you be willing to pay for an Emerald/Obsidian app?

As the Windows app is free, why pay for Android app ? If I am buying a 400$ item with a USB port, an extra payment for a mobile app is unnecessary.

I would pay 0 (zero) to Ultrasabers for such app because in my opinion this app is very easy to develop if you know the commands that should be sent through USB. And US has that knowledge.

But as they will spend some efforts, a symbolic payment of 1$ per user is considerable. (Most of the mobile apps are within the 1-5$ range)

On the other hand, if a 3rd party developer supplies such app, I could pay up to 10$

If US decide that they should not spend effort for such an app, they could really release their API documentation.

[Vyk]

Code:

how much would you be willing to pay for an Emerald/Obsidian app?

As the Windows app is free, why pay for Android app ? If I am buying a 400$ item with a USB port, an extra payment for a mobile app is unnecessary.

I would pay 0 (zero) to Ultrasabers for such app because in my opinion this app is very easy to develop if you know the commands that should be sent through USB. And US has that knowledge.

But as they will spend some efforts, a symbolic payment of 1$ per user is considerable. (Most of the mobile apps are within the 1-5$ range)

You're looking at things the wrong way.  The question is, "What benefit does Ultrasabers get from developing this app?"  They had to develop an app since they needed something to interface the saber with, and Windows is the obvious platform since about 90% of their buyers will have a Windows computer (and most of the rest have  a Mac that can run Windows).  You've just said they'd get little or no money directly from people purchasing an Android app.  I continue to assert that it wouldn't drive additional sales.  At a bare minimum of $25/hr and your one-week (40-hour) estimate, that's a $1000 outlay.  If we assume every Ultrasabers buyer has a smartphone (with the average nearly 50/50 split of Android and iOS), and every Android user buying an Ultrasaber also buys this app for $1, they'll have to sell almost 2000 Emerald sabers before they need to touch the code again in order to break even; since both of those are unlikely assumptions, the actual number will be much higher.  They've released a new Obsidian approximately once a year, and each new board has required a new version of the software; it's reasonable to expect something similar from Emerald, so those sales would have to be in a year's time.  I don't know how much business US does, but that seems like an awful lot of high-end sabers.

The flip side of the coin is "how many sales will US lose by not developing the app?"  Their profit margin is harder to estimate, but at a guess it's going to take them over a hundred people per year deciding not to buy a saber in order to cost them what the app development would cost.  (There's also the question of how many sales they'd lose by developing an Android app and not an iOS app; I suspect that most users will not appreciate the much higher technical difficulty of interfacing a USB device to iOS.  In other words, developing an Android app could cost them sales among iOS users.  Bear in mind that, on average, iOS users are younger and more affluent than Android users and thus more likely to buy $400+ lightsabers.)

You also haven't addressed my point about Android as a broad target.  The risk of "I got a Galaxy S5 and the Emerald app doesn't work with it and you need to fix it or I badmouth you on every forum I can find" is high enough to make each new phone and tablet release something that may need support (and thus incur more cost).  While doing this, they need to be sure not to break older versions, of course, for the same reason.  Ongoing support costs can add up surprisingly quickly (every hour of a cheap programmer's time is 25 more copies of the app to sell, and testing takes time).

On the other hand, if a 3rd party developer supplies such app, I could pay up to 10$

If US decide that they should not spend effort for such an app, they could really release their API documentation.

Or they could consider it a trade secret and keep it proprietary to make it more difficult to reverse-engineer what's currently the most advanced LED driver on the market.  One of those options requires effort on their part; the other requires no effort on their part and could decrease competition and thus increase their sales.

I'm not saying that US will never develop an Android app; they could be doing it right now for all I know.  I would be surprised if it was the case, though, for the reasons given above.

[realmoe]

Get a windows 8.1 tablet and problem solved. the new slates will load windows programs same as computer. They have cdrom and usb support etc... Android os is far too fragmented to keep up with, I mean there are hundreds of different devices to keep up with all with different drivers. Like my FIT BIT for example, works great on my galaxy s4 but not on most other phones due to the Bluetooth version.

IOS is also very limited in that aspect. It would be easier I think to integrate wireless capability in the electronics or a dongle internally so that your computer or tablet can modify it from a web interface. This would work via HTML5 or even something as simple as embedded java script. I would be willing to help on that!!!!