KegBB

Since I just got an android phone I was thinking about making an android app for the kegbot. I was just wondering what people would like to see in such an app.

I was thinking about having the following features:

-keg status - temperature, amount remaining, etc
-drinks lists by keg and user
-drink details
-user management
-add/remove tokens
-tap status - idle, pouring (who is pouring and current pour)

Let me know what you think of the features list, what else would you like to see?

Lastly, I've seen in the current lcd code that some of this information is obtained in less than ideal ways. There are comments about a possible API. Can this app be made efficiently without the use of an API or should I wait for an API to be developed?

Edited goliathdrakken (Jan. 9, 2010 16:07:04)

goliathdrakken
Since I just got an android phone I was thinking about making an android app for the kegbot. I was just wondering what people would like to see in such an app.

That'd be awesome, yes! Heh, we were just wishing for something like this over in the "LCD with buttons" thread a few weeks ago.

(Heh, I have an android phone too and had assumed no one else would be interested in the less-popular platform; great to have a co-conspirator!)

goliathdrakken
I was thinking about having the following features:

-keg status - temperature, amount remaining, etc
-drinks lists by keg and user
-drink details
-user management
-add/remove tokens
-tap status - idle, pouring (who is pouring and current pour)

Let me know what you think of the features list, what else would you like to see?

Good list. There's quite a bit of overlap with the ideal feature set of the web app, though that seems to be a common feature among mobile apps. Making use of the camera to set profile photos would be great too.

goliathdrakken

Lastly, I've seen in the current lcd code that some of this information is obtained in less than ideal ways. There are comments about a possible API. Can this app be made efficiently without the use of an API or should I wait for an API to be developed?

I was just warning kgrewohl about this in IRC; yeah, we sorely need an async notification channel in kegnet. I started rewriting the protocol this afternoon and have made good progress; hope to have something much more usable tomorrow.

Actually, most of the things on your list could be done via the kegweb frontend; it would be straightforward to expose AJAXy endpoints there for viewing and manipulating objects.

Edited mike (Jan. 9, 2010 18:07:10)

(Heh, I have an android phone too and had assumed no one else would be interested in the less-popular platform; great to have a co-conspirator!)

Ya I had an iphone and really didn't like it, i wanted to make app for it, but i refused to invest in a mac to do so.

I like your idea of using the camera to set profile pictures. Many of the items i considered for the app are duplicates of the web frontend, which puts them at a lower priority to me. The one thing that i really want out of the app is user management. An easy way to add users, change tokes, add pictures, etc..

I also really like the idea of a real time display of the tap status. So when a token is added it displays who's toke it is, then start displaying the current flow measurement. This would also be a good utility to calibrate the flow meter.

Looking forward to what you come up with for the async notification channel in kegnet.

Edited goliathdrakken (Jan. 10, 2010 12:23:48)