After mentioning my new toy a couple of posts ago I mentioned I was hoping to do a bit of Android development.
I’ve been doing a bit of Android work as part of my new job (I recently joined a very cool team at work) making some existing Java code run, but this is my first real application.
I had left the TV on and gone to the office one day last week and while it did not permanent damage, there was a slight bit of ghosting from the MythTV menu for a day or 2 afterwards. I already have my TV hooked up a couple of topic on my home MQTT broker, so I though that running up a simple Android Widget to show the state would be a good starting point.
The TV/Status topic updates every 30 seconds and currently shows either off or a string like on:RGB:6 which is made up of state, input and volume.
The first task is to create a Android Service that will subscribe to this topic and watch for changes. The standard IA92 MQTT drivers can be used with the Android SDK to get access to the broker, so the connect code is very similar to the code used in my Twitter2MQTT bridge except the id for the client is generated from the phones unique id.
private String android_id =Secure.getString(this.getContentResolver(),Secure.ANDROID_ID);
private boolean connect() {
try {
client = (MqttClient) MqttClient.createMqttClient("tcp://tiefighter.loc:1883", null);
client.registerSimpleHandler(new MessageHandler());
client.connect("droid-"+android_id, true, (short) 240);
String topics[] = {"TV/Status"};
int qos[] = {1};
client.subscribe(topics, qos);
return true;
} catch (MqttException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return false;
}
}
The MessageHandler is an inner class and handles both incoming messages and reconnection using the following 2 methods.
public void publishArrived(String topic, byte[] payload, int qos, boolean retained) throws Exception {
String message = new String(payload);
// This is to allow access to the notification service from a none
if (Looper.myLooper() == null) {
Looper.prepare();
}
RemoteViews updateViews = new RemoteViews(TVLongService.this.getPackageName(), R.layout.main);
String toastMsg = "";
String toastHead = "";
int icon = 0;
boolean alert = false;
if (message.equals("off")) {
if (TVWidget.on) {
toastMsg = "TV now OFF";
toastHead = "TV OFF";
icon = R.drawable.tv_off;
alert = true;
TVWidget.on = false;
}
} else {
if (!TVWidget.on) {
toastMsg = "TV now ON";
toastHead = "TV ON";
icon = R.drawable.tv_on;
alert = true;
TVWidget.on = true;
}
}
if (alert) {
Intent intent = new Intent();
PendingIntent contentIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(TVLongService.this, 0, intent, 0);
NotificationManager notificationManager = (NotificationManager) TVLongService.this.getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
Notification notification = new Notification(icon, toastHead, System.currentTimeMillis());
notification.setLatestEventInfo(TVLongService.this, "TV Monitor", toastMsg, contentIntent);
notificationManager.notify(1, notification);
updateViews.setImageViewResource(R.id.img, icon);
}
ComponentName componentName = new ComponentName(TVLongService.this, TVWidget.class);
AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager = AppWidgetManager.getInstance(TVLongService.this);
appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(componentName, updateViews);
}
The MessageHandler onMessage method fires when a message is posted to the TV/Status topic and then updates the widget Icon from tv_on to tv_off and then triggers a notification pop-up if the state has changed since the previous state.
The connectionLost method fires up a background thread to try and reconnect to the broker every 10 seconds.
public void connectionLost() throws Exception {
client = null;
Log.v("TVMonitor","connection dropped");
Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
do {//pause for 5 seconds and try again;
Log.v("TVMonitor","sleeping for 10 seconds before trying to reconnect");
try {
Thread.sleep(10 * 1000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
} while (!connect());
System.err.println("reconnected");
}
});
}
Next Steps
- Survive network changes
At the moment the code does not handle moving from WIFI to 3G networking all that well, there are collection of BroadCast future PendingIntents that should signal changes in network state.
- Geo-Fencing
I don’t really need to know that the TV is on while I’m at home, so I’m planning on adding a filter so notifications are only fired when I’m outside say 200m of home
- MythTV
May be add some indication as to what channel is currently being watched and what the upcoming recordings may be
, which is basically a 500gb disk with a mini ARM based Linux machine strapped to the side. There is a reasonable sized 
