Since I only have very basic Android development skills I’ve focussed instead on developing the concept and refining the user interface. Now that I have digital wireframes I’ll use After Effects to bring them to life, and create a video emulation of how I imagine the app will work. With this I can pitch the concept to someone with more technical abilities.
In the meantime, I was investigating NFC technology for another paper I’m doing at uni and thought it could be useful for prototyping my xen app as well. Until an app developer gives me a hand with geolocation, I need another way to demonstrate the app being activated when the phone enters a space. Instead of just cheating by manually opening xen, I’ve looked into setting up an NFC tag so that I can press my phone against it (simulating what will happen when users enter the radius of a point they’ve set on the app), and xen will automatically open.
To get to grips with how NFC works, I delved into several forums. Over a couple of hours I tested different softwares and setups, before finally arriving at a process that is reliable and achieves what I want; the ability to both read and write data to NFC tags. The logos here represent this investigative process; I’ll write a brief documentation for each here (left to right, top to bottom):
Android Forums- An online forum where a community of app developers share questions and answers.
Android- The operating system on my own phone, which I have been using for tests. In 2014 Android held a 81.5% market share of smart phones, plus I have developed basic apps for Android before, so it makes sense that for our prototyping at least, we use an Android device.
Blogger- An online blogging platform owned by Google. I found a helpful how-to guide on here from a tech guru explaining how to set up Secure Settings using Tasker to alter default Android settings, switching to a custom configuration we needed.
Google Play- This is where I bought and downloaded Trigger Pro, NFC Actions, Super User, Secure Settings, and Tasker. This is a reliable source for software that can be used on Android devices.
NFC Actions- The first software that was widely recommended on forums for writing data to NFC tags. After trialling this I was dissatisfied with the restricted options regarding manipulation of both the tag and the device reading it, so kept looking for other options to see if there was anything better.
Super User- This software was required to gain root access to my device (Samsung Galaxy SIII), which was needed to alter settings that usually aren’t available to standard users because changing them can affect the operation of the device.
Rapid NFC- This is one of the companies I looked at buying NFC tags from. In the end I went with TagStand because they had cheaper options, but the help sections on Rapid NFC’s website were very useful, and pointed me to the Trigger app which is their recommended software for programming NFC tags with an Android device.
Secure Settings- More of a plugin than a stand-alone app, Secure Settings gave me access to alter some of the more delicate settings on my phone that Android doesn’t bother providing as publicly accessible.
Reddit- When I ran into some steps that didn’t make sense to me or didn’t work as other forum members said they should, I Googled the issue and found a few workarounds on Reddit.
Tasker- In one of the forums I was recommended to use Tasker, an app available for download on the Google Play store. This was how I manipulated the settings opened up by Secure Settings, defining a new task by listing what I needed changed, then running the task to automatically apply the changes.
XDA Developers- This is another helpful forum for Android developers that I have used in the past, which has a bank of questions already asked that often match the exact issue I’m having.
Trigger- Finally after testing different apps and altering many settings on my device I landed on Trigger, a fantastically versatile app that (with a few tweaks to set up the settings of both app and device) can now be used to programme NFC chips from my phone. I also installed a plugin allowing me to wipe the chip again, so I can read and write as many times as I like.
Using the Trigger app on my phone I have now successfully managed to write an NFC chip that, on first tap, will activate airplane mode, and on second tap will deactivate airplane mode.