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4/28/2017 0 Comments

Finished?

I think, at this point, I've done all I'm going to do. Possibly. There are two simple things I'd like to change (recoloring a radar dot in red when in Guide Mode and having popups appear only once), but I've already zipped up the project; created the text files and zipped them up into a folder; and uploaded and linked all of these on my site. It's a process to update all of that, so I'm not sure I'll be going ahead with those changes.

*EDIT* I went ahead and recolored the Guided radar dot. It was so simple, and I would have hated myself if I hadn't, so I went ahead and did it. Now I'll have to update the files, but it's worth the peace of mind, at least.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

The Last Week

My presentation went swimmingly, and now I'm spending the night transferring my website into this one and getting my documentation/paperwork prepared for my defense next Thursday. I've spent the past few hours cleaning up my code, adding additional inline documentation, redoing the look of the intro page, and redoing my Maps location services to have it use my original LocationProvider, since I figured out what had been going wrong.

Now I hope to get this site done at the very least tonight, and links/download links of my code up and ready to roll.  That way they'll be ready to print out and put in a binder along with everything else.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week ???

I can't believe it.

I finished the necessities--I think. The only one I'm unsure of is the "ability to zoom", which is built-in in Google Maps, so it's covered in that respect, but I have not yet implemented the ability to adjust the radar distance. The radar wasn't required in the first place, so I'm assuming the current Maps functionality is fine, but other than that uncertainty, I. AM. DONE.

At least, for the presentation. There's a slight misstep in logic when it comes to displaying a different marker if it's in guide mode, but as there's a lot of communication going on between a lot of little places, I really, really don't want to have to deal with trying to find where I went wrong at the moment. The marker is changed when you want to be taken to it, and that's all that matters right now. I'll probably return to that problem after my presentation in preparation for the defense in two weeks, but until then, I'm not bothering myself with it.

When navigated back to the AR view from the Maps activity, it also clears whether you're being guided to a marker, which is a slight issue in itself, but also leaves the selection on that particular POI. You can re-select the option after selecting another to trigger the onChange event, but that's another thing that I actually may not return to. Time is running short, and I'm going to have to perform some triage, here.

The only other bug is when you deselect a marker that you're being guided to, it stops it from being in Guide Mode and changes the selected value in the select box to "Exit Guide Mode". The problem is that, while the option is, in fact, selected, the option that's *shown* to be selected remains the guided-to POI, and I can't seem to change that. Maybe it's me, but none of the JavaScript solutions I've found online have worked. Tomorrow I'm going in to see Dr. McVey or Dr. Pankratz to see if there actually is a solution.

*UPDATE* The marker logic of Bug #1 has been SOLVED. I also discovered that my location would update once when loaded and never again, and after searching and searching for and failing to find an answer that also utilized the same location class structure I did (there are so.many.ways to implement location services, it's not even funny), I turned to GitHub. In the process, I found that people had written immensely useful location libraries that would take care of all the implementation of background methods for you, and I found one, in particular, called EasyLocation, that works like a charm.
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I also managed to get my location services working on my Maps activity, since it had the same problem, although EasyLocation can't be implemented for fragments, so I had to Google yet again and implemented something very similar to my former LocationProvider class. Actually, as I was writing this new one with help from a stackoverflow post, I think I know what went wrong in my former attempt, which was a really easy fix. I was asking for location updates to begin the update stream when the location was null in the beginning. It was never null, however, so I didn't actually begin the updates. And I found this out because I discovered showToast from another example. How nice that would have been to have found out about showToast EARLIER IN THE SEMESTER anyway it's fine, things are working now and that's all that matters.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week ???

Everything is going as planned, according to my final-week schedule. Tuesday I got all the information from the server and stored it correctly. Wednesday I took that information and enabled the ability to choose the info the user would like to see, as well as completely finished the information popups. Today I forgot to take the phone to my TA hours, so instead I'm typing this up, but I'll be working on and hopefully finishing the "take me to ____" functionality. I am already storing the index of the POI, so now I just need to use that to determine the marker image to change and a flag to determine when to change it/change it back. Friday will be focusing on editing my code in the maps activity Java file to read the JSON file, since I changed it, and if I have time, enabling the maps activity to be accessed via my JavaScript.
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The weekend, then, if all goes to plan, will be aesthetics, so come Monday, I'll be able to begin documentation (which shouldn't be difficult; I already have ample inline documentation, so I'll just transfer that over to a separate document) and compiling all my code and resources, updating this site, and printing everything I need for my presentation and defense.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week ???

I'm successfully accessing and reading from a JSON file on the server, and I'm in the process of getting it to read from the file in Java, in addition to JavaScript, for use within the Maps activity. I'm still communicating with Wikitude support to figure out why isVisible() isn't working, which I'm going to need, but I've found a workaround that accomplishes nearly the same thing in the meantime. I'm reading the information from the file into different arrays for each type, which I'll access to fill a dropdown placed in the HTML making up the AR view. To enable recolorization of a Marker (to allow being taken to a POI), I'll be inserting perhaps another dropdown to select which POI to be taken to and accessing the correct Marker based upon ID and index.

I'm also in the process of getting the "You are here" functionality up and running, in addition to finishing up the AR portion.

*UPDATE* I am now asynchronously loading the POIs from the server in my Maps activity!
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*DOUBLE UPDATE* "You are here" functionality is up and running. All that's left to is get the information-choosing functionality up and running, along with the "take me here", and then I'm done! I'm planning to get these done by the end of the week.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week ??

I'm pretty sure I've been updating this regularly, but I feel like it's been awhile since I last did. Everything's a blur, so we're going to call it Week ?? for now.

Spring break wasn't much of a break, but I did make a lot of progress on my app, which I'm very excited about. I have multiple POIs reading from a server (their example file; I'm not sure why it won't work reading from mine, but I might meet to figure that out), when I click on each POI I have the name, description, and distance to the POI listed on a closable popup (and I have code to load distances both in bulk and singly), POIs show name and description when on screen, and I have a radar showing all the POIs on screen (and the POI on the radar turns a different color when the POI on-screen is selected).

What's really exciting is that there is also a built-in function I can use to set a geofence, and it returns true if the user has entered that geofence. Since I already have the functionality of having the popup show up with information, I can use what I know about that working to have the popup show when it enters the fence. I can also customize what happens when the user clicks the radar, which I'm generally thinking will open the page with Google Maps. Also, since I know how to turn a radar dot a different color and to change the marker image on screen, I can use that knowledge to change the marker and radar dot when I begin implementing my map functionality.
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It's been a large leap this week, and I'm thrilled that I have so much done, as well as the fact that I have discovered and know how to use the tools that I need to move forward. I'm hoping to implement the geofence functionality before Thursday so I can show that off, as well, but we'll see how time treats me! Overall, I'm incredibly pleased with my progress, and I'd like to have all of the functionality done by the end of the month.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week 6

Progress has been made this week, thank the Lord. It turns out Google Play Services wasn't working right on the phone because I wasn't signed in, but even that had issues because Mike had been signed in as well--but it was still not working/updating like it should, so I got Julio to take a look at it. I have not worked with an Android phone, so he fiddled with a few things, and voila! I also got Android Studio to recognize the phone when I plugged it in and to detect it correctly (turns out, it's not version 1.0. Imagine that), which means that the app now runs.
I have finally gotten location services to work, courtesy of Mike's project and link to a resource I hadn't found. The Google API is working like a charm, and the sample POI file provided by Wikitude is working properly! First major hurdle has been overcome. An AR drawable bubble does, indeed, appear on the camera, which is incredibly exciting. Now that that's figured out, I'm going to be working on displaying several POIs at once and editing the markers that appear, and once I have that working, I'm going to work on the info-dropping functionality. I'm probably going to be taking a look at Mike's to get an idea, and also doing tons of research on my own.
I'll also hopefully be meeting with Dr. McVey soon to get the database firgured out. I've barely worked with one--and that was a relational database, which I don't think fits my needs. This will be going on simultaneously with displaying multiple POIs, and then info-dropping when coming near to one.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week 5

Things are up and running! I have five buttons on the first screen, and when I click the map button, it successfully takes me to the Google Maps page. I've also managed to set up my ARchitect View for the Augmented Reality experience. However, once I start trying to test on the physical phone I received from Dr. Pankratz, I am unable to do so because it is version 1.0, which I can't download to the computer to enable the phone testing. I'll be working on figuring that out (I'm thinking I have to update the Android phone itself somehow), but as a result, I don't yet know if the AR is set up correctly, or if the Google Map displays like it should. Yet another roadblock, and a frustrating one, at that, because, with AR, I need to be able to test on the physical phone.
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I have been watching YouTube tutorials on how to use Wikitude, and it does seem a bit complex. But I'll just take it one step at a time.
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week 4

I feel like I'm finally settled and firmly on track. Before I was flailing around trying to get everything downloaded and figured out, and, heck, I was barely sure I really wanted to develop for iOS with all the hoops it seemed I had to jump through. But my decision was made for me when I discovered that I couldn't remotely connect to my Mac from my Windows on the campus WiFi, which was the last straw in a series of utter frustration, so I've decided to serve my Android overlords with he rest of the capstone class.

So, I have a direction. I have everything downloaded already--Xamarin is already installed. Last night I had to download a few more files and enable the virtualization technology in my BIOS to enable Android emulation on my computer, and today, after it didn't work (contrary to last night), I updated my Android SDK build tools to the latest version, which fixed the problem. Emulation now runs great, so my goal is to get Hello World to appear, at the very least. And now that I know for sure I'll be developing for Android, I applied for a Wikitude SDK educational license. Wikitude is an AR SDK that is exactly what my project needs--it handles image recognition and tracking, location and distance services (including a radar UI element), and full AR customization. I'm just hoping it works the way I need it to, which, if my little experience has taught me anything, it won't.
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*UPDATE* I managed to figure out the layout designer and display Hello World!
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4/27/2017 0 Comments

Week 3

This week has been a whirlwind of meetings and errands and rehearsals and homework, obligations and a weekend retreat. I've done nothing, and of course I'm majorly on edge and a little despairing as I begin this upcoming week. I think I may have overwhelmed myself yet again this semester, but I'm hoping this next week will be much more productive in the way of my capstone.
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