The tech behind the Poem Booth

At this years Lowlands festival and IFLA World Library Congress we presented the Poem Booth, an installation that takes an image of you and the surroundings and creates a beautiful unique poem. The Poem Booth is a collaboration between VOUW and Little Robots. VOUW created the concept and the physical Poem Booth, and Little Robots has created the software and technology used.

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Firebase email link sign-in + Navigation

Signing in to an app with your email address and clicking a link can be very convenient. There are no passwords to remember and just by signing in you also verify your email address. This option is also provided with Firebase Authentication and there’s documentation on how to integrate this form of sign-in to your app.

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Introducing drumbox: a drum pad synthesizer & sequencer for Android

I’m proud to announce that my new Android app, drumbox, has been released!

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Docker based Android builds on Jenkins using a streamlined Jenkinsfile

If you are building Android apps, you can’t really go without a continuous integration system (ci) to compile your code, run your tests and automate various other tasks. There are many ci systems out there, but for my personal projects I tend to rely on a Jenkins instance that I host myself. I’m using a little shared library I created to make building Android apps easier, while keeping the Jenkinsfile concise.

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RxLint 1.7.5 released

The rxlint check for RxJava code has been updated to version 1.7.5. This version is a bug fix that updates the packaging of the lint check itself; there are no updates to the lint checks contained. If you are using Android Gradle Plugin version 3.5 and up, you should upgrade to 1.7.5 to ensure the check keeps working.

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Introducing Name Tag Printer

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been working on a new product called Name Tag Printer. Name Tag Printer enables you to print name tags for your event, at your event. This not only gives you professional looking name tags, but also real time event statistics. After a private testing period, trying out the app at various events, Name Tag Printer is now available for everyone as beta release!

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RxLint 1.7.0 released

The rxlint check for RxJava has been updated to version 1.7.0. In this version there are exciting new features: support for some OnError* operators and RxKotlin and AutoDispose support!

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Rainy Days 3.1.1 released

Around the new year, I released an update for Rainy Days, the doppler radar app that I originally created in 2009(!) and was effectively the start of my Android career. Today, version 3.1.1 is rolling out, which fixes a couple of issues from that release.

Rainy Days today still does what it did since its inception: showing you accurate doppler rain radar on Google Maps, as fast as possible. Unlike apps that use a single map for the entire world, Rainy Days shows you the best available data for your location.

The latest version brings a refreshed look and updates to performance and a more efficient data use. I hope you’ll like the update, while I’ll keep working on the next one :)

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Rxlint 1.6 checks your RxJava 2 schedulers

Here’s another update to rxlint, adding a new check this time for RxJava 2 that will warn you if you are using a default scheduler in an operator.

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Rxlint 1.5 released

Rxlint 1.5 is now available with two important changes.

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Cupboard vs Room

At I/O, Google announced their Architecture Components effort for Android. This effort contains of a guide and a couple of libraries that help you implementing the “reference” architecture. One of these libraries is Room. Going forward, Room will be the official Android persistence library.

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RxLint 1.2: Double checks, double RxJava versions

RxLint, the lint check that helps you to write better RxJava code, has been updated with a couple of important changes.

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Cupboard 2.2.0 released

A new version Cupboard was released last week. For those that don’t know, Cupboard is a library to simplify working with SQLite, mapping objects to and from the database without getting in your way.

Full changes for this release are in the changelog.

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What's next for android-apt?

Spoiler and short answer: nothing!

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Note to self: RxJava SyncOnSubscribe

I have been banging my head on this one for a while, and now that I finally get it I thought I might write this down.

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rxlint: an Android lint rule for RxJava code

Using RxJava in a project has many advantages, but learning rx can be a bit challenging. And with learning, it’s easy to make mistakes :)

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A good year for the Robots

Into the 2nd year of Little Robots and it was an exciting year! With the new year approaching, it’s time to look back at 2015.

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Unofficial Bean SDK becomes official!

Great news! The Unofficial Android SDK authored by Little Robots for the PunchThrough LightBlue Bean will transfer into the Official Android SDK.

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Getting your clicks on RecyclerView

RecyclerView is a great class that you should consider over ListView for building list interfaces. It offers more flexibility and has built-in hooks that make implementing animations and custom layouts much easier compared to ListView.

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Google I/O top 3 announcements

Back and still a bit jet lagged, I had an amazing time at Google I/O. There were a lot of exciting announcements, but this is my top 3:

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Disable Android pre dexing on CI builds

In Android builds, pre dexing helps to speed up the build for incremental builds. On a CI server, where you usually run a clean build, pre dexing is only adding extra time to the build without any added value. There’s already a tip on the Tools site on this, but how do you disable pre dex for all project on your build server?

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Stetho for Android debug builds only

Recently, Facebook released a tool called Stetho, which let’s you inspect your Android app from the Chrome Developer tools. I find that particularly nifty because it also provides access to any SQLite databases used in the app. Obviously, this type of tools should only be included in debug builds of your app. Here’s a nice way to accomplish that.

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Welcome to the Little Robots blog

Consider this blog a continuation of my personal blog at code.neenbedankt.com. On this site you'll find (technical) articles related to Android and updates on Little Robots in general.

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