Arduino Companion - my first app for devices is out

Tonight I finally pushed the app out to Android Market and Apple’s AppStore. It’s already live on Market, but I guess it can take both days and weeks for it to hit the App-store? I hope others will find it as useful as I do. The idea of an offline Reference came about when arduino.cc experienced some server issues in January 2012. When I looked around for a way to browse the Arduino reference, I figured I could make something better than what was already available. I also had need for a Resitor calculator, so I’ve added that as well. That one I use many times a day thanks to my newfound hobby.

Making the app

I have lots of plans for new features I want in the app, but feel free to suggest improvements or new features in the comments. All sorts of feedback is very welcome! The app is pure Actionscript. I made parts of the app using Flex initially and the speed/responsiveness was nowhere near what I wanted. The data for the reference is structured using Expressionengine for easy editing/export. It took about 1,5 weeks to take the app to it’s current state and more than half the time was spent on testing. Getting one app to work well across multiple screens is really quite a mess, so I hope I’ve tested enough?

The only known bug is that my Asus Transformer will report incorrect sizes when the app is rotated. It actually swaps the values for rotated and default orientation around? I only have this Android tablet to test on, so if you have an Android tablet and a few minutes to test - please do so and leave a message here. Apart from that bug, it works like a charm on iOS and Android. I haven’t tested it on Playbook as I’m yet to receive from RIM the one I won just before GotoAndSki.

I’ll probably spend some time getting it published to the other app stores as well such as Amazon, Nook and maybe also smaller ones like Samsung Apps. Any other suggestions?

Other apps?

While this is the first one that has been published, I’ve also worked other AIR-based apps for devices. Next out will be my game project MineGunner and start to play with Genome2D. I had to take a break from that when I discovered that I needed hardware to get it where I wanted. The demos I saw of Stage3D / Genome2D at GotoAndSki totally blew me away! Who will need more than 6000 sprites running at 60fps on an iPad? Not me! :-D