Sync Photos from a Camera SD Card to your Phone

As I get used to owning a Fujifilm X-E3 compact mirrorless APS-C camera, one thing I’ve just figured out is how I can transfer photos and videos off it to my Android phone.

The Fuji app is supposed to do a lot of this automatically, but I’ve found it unreliable (often not connecting to the camera), doesn’t sync video, and needs to use its own WiFi hotspot for the transfer.

What I’ve figured out is I can use a USB on-the-go (OTG) adaptor, USB SD card reader, and a couple of apps to do everything I need. Here’s how you can set up the same workflow:

Get a USB OTG adaptor and USB SD Card Reader. Make sure your phone can read the SD card when it’s attached.

You’ll need to use a file-browsing app to look for the attached USB device; phone manufacturers usually pre-install one for you.

If you can see the files on your SD card, you can move onto the next step!

Next download FolderSync. This will allow you to sync the files from your SD card to your phones’ internal memory. Set up a ‘folder pair’ to sync the files where you want them (even to the Cloud).

Now you’ve got the files syncing from your SD card to your phone, you may need to perfect things depending on the camera you have. Fujifilm cameras  save videos as .MOV files which don’t show up in Google Photos or the gallery app (not on Samsung phones anyway).

To fix this, I’ve used an app called Automate to rename the copied files to .MOV.mp4. That (weirdly) sorts it out!

If you haven’t seen Automate before, it’s a bit like Tasker, but you build the automation (flow) using blocks.

The MOV renamer process I built looks like this;

This can be added to my homescreen as a shortcut which runs the flow when I tap it.

I’ve published the final version of the flow to the Automate community so that you can download and adapt it however you see fit.

To help show you exactly how this works I’ve created a short video. I go into more detail on the flow I used, and you can see the whole thing in action.

Streaming video from the Humax HDR-Fox T2 to Android and Blackberry Playbook

One of the nice features of the Humax HDR-Fox T2 is that it’ll stream your standard definition recordings over your network to DLNA clients. I’ve had a it streaming video onto a PC running XBMC, but wanted something more portable for catching up with some TV whilst I’m getting ready in the morning.

As long as your Android phone is relatively recent, there are a bunch of DLNA clients.. the one I’ve had the best results with is Skifta. Then I’ve got MX Player installed which will handle video playback. The thing I like about MX Player is the gesture control for skipping through the program (swipe across), and adjusting volume (swipe up/down).

I’m running that on a Samsung Galaxy S3, and it works really well. It’s just slightly too small when it’s across the room. It would be better on a tablet, and I have a Blackberry Playbook (from their developer programme).. the only problem has been the lack of a DLNA client.. until just recently, when I found KalemSoft Media Player.

The app is currently being sold at £5, which was a bit more than I’m used to paying.. but the reviews were almost all really good, so I gave it a go. Here’s the app running with my Humax HDR-Fox T2;

As you can see, it’s really fast to browse the folders and start playing back video. It even manages HD if you’re running the auto-decode package, although I had buffering issues when trying to play it back over my network.

KalemSoft do a PC service which will share all your video from there too; I’ve found it works really well.. better than TVersity, and the built-in Windows media sharing stuff, both of which seemed to take ages to index my stuff, and then didn’t even work well after that. Apparently it can be configured to share stuff out over the Internet (password protected too), but I don’t need that feature. It can also stream live TV if you’ve got a TV card.

Titanium Apps and the Blackberry Playbook

In Feburary 2012, Blackberry updated the OS for their 7″ Playbook tablet to v2.0. This introduced compatailbity with Android-based applications whereby developers can simply repackage, code sign, and submit their Android apps into BlackBerry App World. It also means you can take any Android app (that hasn’t gone through this process) and sideload the app yourself.

Since I develop mobile apps for iOS and Android using the Titanium platform, I was interested in how much effort it would be to get my existing apps working on the Playbook. There are plenty of posts on how to take an APK and sign it correctly for App World, but what took me a while to figure out, was which version on Titanium was compatible with the Playbook.

After some experimentation, I’ve found that if you package your app against Titanium SDK 1.7.5, it’ll work nicely on the Playbook. Version 1.8.x won’t work (hmm, maybe it’s V8 vs Rhino.. V8 definitely doesn’t work…). Certain pieces of code may also cause the app to crash (whereas it won’t crash on a proper Android device). The one thing I hit, was passing url:null, into Titanium.UI.createWindow will crash the app, whereas that’s absoutely fine on iOS and Android.

The other small advantage of using the 1.7.5 SDK is that the resulting APK is a lot smaller, although since the current Playbook only has Wifi this is less of an issue than it is on a mobile phone.

Now we have the APK, you just have to go through the app packaging/signing process as detailed elsewhere on the web, or in Blackberry’s official documentation. This new GUI-based tool looks like a good place to start if you don’t like working from the command line.

Blackberry Playbook: Bargain 7″ Tablet

In the last few weeks the price of the Blackberry Playbook has plummeted further, to £169 in the UK from retailers such as PC World. At that price it deserved some research into what it offers & whether it’s worth a look. The tablet itself is solidly built, with a decent amount of processing power & good multi-tasking abilities. There’s an app store that offers a fair number of apps, including the obligatory Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, and useful stuff like free VNC clients.

The 7″ screen looks crisp & vivid, and isn’t as cramped as I’d imagined it would be. I’d viewed someone’s Samsung 7″ tablet so knew what to expect. Browsing the web on it is slick & fast, plus it’ll play Flash videos, so iPlayer, 4oD and other sites all work on it without a hitch.

The OS is soon to get v2.0, and that’s where things get even more interesting; that opens the Playbook up to the Android Market, allowing it to run a majority/proportion (not sure which yet!) of Android apps. OS2.0 will also offer MKV support, but what codecs are actually covered is unclear.

Built-in storage is limited to what you initially purchase (e.g. 16Gb), and there’s no SD card expansion. However, if you root the Playbook, there’s a method to add USB-host functionality, allowing you to attach USB flash drives.

A micro-HDMI connector allows it to mirror the display to a TV without proprietary adapters & it just works!

Here’s what you need if you want to hook it up to a TV (a few different cable lengths included):

Micro HDMI to HDMI adapter = £3.56

0.5m standard HDMI lead = £1.18
1.0m standard HDMI lead = £1.14
5.0m standard HDMI lead = £3.19

And here’s what you’d need to connect a standard USB flash drive

Micro USB to USB adapter (270 angle means it doesn’t clash with HDMI output) = £3.17
USB Female to Female adapter = £1.14

For the back of the car, I’ve gone for a generic headset mount that can also mount an iPad:

Universal tablet mount

And to protect it from scratches and minor droppage in the house I bought the official faux leather convertible case, which beats the hell out of the horrible case it ships with.

Faux Leather Convertible Case

After a few hours of research I knew it was a good deal, bought one & haven’t been disappointed. It *is* a bargain for what you get :)

QR Code Bookmarklet

QR Codes are a useful way of getting data to your mobile phone using it’s built-in camera. They’re basically 2D barcodes that can carry things like URLs and contact details. On Android I’d recommend using the app called Barcode Scanner to read QR Codes.

There were instances where I wanted to open up a webpage with a long URL on my phone & didn’t want to go through the hassle of copying and pasting it into one of those online QR Code generators.

This bookmarklet for Firefox and newer versions of IE lets you create a QR Code for the page you’re on.. it’ll default to the current page, but you can also override this with something else (like a URL from your clipboard, or whatever).

Add a new bookmark to your toolbar, and set the URL to the code below (I’d have put the proper link on here but WordPress disables the Javascript);

javascript:var%20sCode=prompt('Enter%20URL%20to%20encode',window.location);void(window.open('http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl='+encodeURIComponent(sCode),'Qr%20code','top=100,left=200,width=350,height=350,status=yes'));

Android Apps – Pick of the best stuff – Jan 2010

Here’s my pick from the thousands of Android apps that are available as of Jan 2010.. all of these are free!

Media

• Listen – Google’s podcast subscription & listening app
• beebPlayer – Stream content from the BBC’s iPlayer
• Rev3Remote – Stream video content from Revision3

Screen Candy

• chompSMS – View SMS conversations like the iPhone
• SMS Popup – Nice pop-up notification of SMS messages
• Endless Walls Wallpapers Lite – Wallpapers
• Backgrounds – Wallpapers
• Retro Clock Widget – Nice clock + date widget
• The Weather Channel – has a nice widget

Developer / Techie / Advanced stuff

• Quick Settings – Quick access to settings, e.g. turn off wifi
• ASTRO File Manager – Access files on your SD card
• AppsInstaller – Install apps from your SD card
• Free Advanced Task Manager – Task management & app uninstaller
• Wifi Analyser – Wifi graphing (like Netstumbler)
• GPS Status – Detailed GPS info
• android-vnc-viewer – VNC Viewer

Barcodes / Shopping

• ShopSavvy – Read barcodes and it’ll find the product online
• Barcode Scanner – Recommended for reading (and creating) QR Codes

Augmented Reality

• Google Sky Map
• Reality Browser 3.0

Misc Useful Stuff

• RealCalc Scientific Calculator
• Voice Recorder
• Text Edit
• Compass
• DrawNoteK – Draw notes on the screen
• Bubble – Spirit level

App Versions of Websites

• Quickpedia – Mobile optimised Wikipedia
• Seesmic – Twitter client
• Facebook for Android – Official Facebook app
• Bloo – Unofficial Facebook app that includes notifications

Games

• Labyrinth Lite
• Phit Droid
• Frozen Bubble
• Coloroid
• Bebbled

iPhone and Android development with Titanium

Over the past few months I’ve worked on a couple of mobile applications for the iPhone and Android platforms. I’d looked at Phonegap some time before that, but determined that it wasn’t up to the job, but more recently I stumbled across Titanium from Appcelerator. The idea is that you code up your apps using HTML and Javascript. The Javascript calls the Titanium API to create things like lists, dialog boxes, and phone features such as geolocation.

Some of the advantages of using Titanium are:

– No need to learn Objective-C (iPhone) or Java (Android)
– Leverage existing HTML + Javascript skills
– Write one version of the code that can be deployed to both platforms
– Code is compiled up into native applications which are accepted in the App Store
– Potential to deploy to other platforms in the future (e.g. Blackberry, Symbian)

The level of support provided by the Appcelerator staff on the official forums is brilliant, and the tutorial videos are good for those who want to get an overview of creating apps without wading through documentation.

You’ll still need a Mac if you want to develop for the iPhone, because Titanium makes use of the iPhone SDK. But if you just want to do Android development then you can use Window or Linux as well.

Although you’ll be developing 1 set of code for both the iPhone and Android, you’ll probably want to customise the UI slightly differently for each platform. For example, Android apps often hide away items such as ‘Settings’ and ‘Help’ under the Menu button. It’s simple to code this kind of thing up:

	if (Titanium.Platform.name == 'android') {
		var menu = Titanium.UI.createMenu();
		menu.addItem("Help/About", function() {
			displayWindow('Help / About', 'window_about.html');
		}, Titanium.UI.Android.SystemIcon.HELP);
		Titanium.UI.setMenu(menu);
	} else {
		data.push({title:'Help / About',image:'tabicon_help.png', color:'#ffffff'});
	}

That code will create the Help/About option under a menu on Android, and add it to the home screen’s list on the iPhone. Simple.

Titanium is an awesome framework so if you’re considering developing for the iPhone and/or Android then I’d highly recommend you take a look.