Smart List was an idea my friend and I came up with for our senior project. We wanted to take advantage of the Google Places API that was recently released to the public as of May 2011, and create a unique and useful Android app. Hence, we decided on the idea of a task managing system/to-do list which would voice alert (proximity alert) you whenever you're near your errands' locations. You need only to enter the name of a place such as Wholes Food and it would return a list of all Wholes Food in the area which you can pick from and view on the map to do a task such as Groceries. Additional features include displaying a map of where all the tasks are located, an alarm system to set when the errands are due, and the option to email the list of all errands.
After 3 months of careful design, implementation, and user testing, we finally have a finished and working product! It has been an amazing experience getting to work with Android. We definitely faced some problems with how often to poll for the GPS location so as not to overload the battery consumption. Our solution was to set different polling rates based on whether the users' position (longitude and latitude) changes over time. If the user is at home, the GPS will poll every 10 minutes whereas if the user's location changes rapidly (perhaps he/she is in a car driving), we would poll it every 5 seconds. It manages to work pretty well, I would say.
Some Views of Smart List
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| Add Task Activity |
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Home Activity
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| Proximity Alert |
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| Map of all Tasks |
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