Android Energy Application Development

Android is a mobile platform that is becoming extremely popular which is why we have chosen to create an Android application for our next project. I have wanted to learn about mobile development for a while and this presents a perfect opportunity. Android uses the Linux Kernel, OpenGL,and SQL. This makes Android very powerful and able to create many different applications. Android applications are programmed in Java, so if you are familiar with Java, you shouldn't have too much trouble creating your own Android applications after a bit of reading.

Starting this project, I had little knowledge about mobile development, so I needed to find good resources that would get me up to speed fairly quickly. After some research, we found the books "Hello Android" and "Beginnning Android 2". Both of these books are easy to read and break down programming for Android nicely. They walk the reader through the creation of several sample programs that illustrate key features of Android programming. This enables a developer to being developing their own applications fairly quickly.

Hello Android



Beginning Android 2



Another helpful resource that I have been using is the Android Developers website. Like the books, this site contains helpful examples which explain key concepts to the reader. Like all introductions to programming, there is a "Hello Android" program. I highly recommend doing the examples on the website. I have found that reading is important, however, nothing can beat learning by example. The Android API can also be found there under the reference tab. The Android Developers website can be found here.

We have decided that our next application will be a mobile energy application. The application will query the Wattdepot server, which holds Oahu energy data, and display requested information on an Android smart phone. This allows consumers with Android smart phones to get Oahu energy data whenever they want. Like our earlier applications, we hope that this application will help educate Oahu residents to make them smart consumers.