1. Download and unzip the Android SDK

Android SDK

Although we will not require the SDK to build apps using Air, the SDK kit contains some tools that will be required for transferring the app over to your phone. It also contains a handy tool for grabbing screenshots from the phone, as well as the emulator used for testing the app on your mac (both will be covered in future posts)

2. Open the Android installer

Inside the folder you have unzipped, you will find a folder called “tools”. Open this and click the file titled “android”.

If you see a box titled “Choose packages to install”, you can close this box which should allow you to continue to the “Android SDK and AVD Manager”.

On the left hand side, click the “installed packages” option. This should show you that Android SDK Tools has been installed onto your mac. As we will not require the SDK to build the app it is not important that the latest version is installed, but this can be done if you wish. Once installed you can now close the SDK and AVD Manager.

3. Check that the mobile device has connected correctly

Open Terminal, found in applications/utilities on your mac, and enter the file path to the tools folder in the Android SDK. The file path can be found easily by highlighting any of the files found within the Android SDK/tools folder, and pressing cmd+i to open the information about that file. You can then simply copy the information found under “where” and paste it into Terminal. After the file path, type “/adb devices” as shown below.

Now when you press “enter”, the mobile device connected via USB should be displayed. Once this has been succesfully completed you are ready to install the Air components for Flash CS5.

4. Download and Install the Air Components

Air 2.5 extension for Flash CS5

Follow the link to the Adobe Labs page where you will find the download file for the Flash CS5 extension for Air 2.5 and instructions on how to install via the Adobe Extension Manager.

5. Open Flash CS5

Once the extension has been installed, you can now open Flash. On the welcome screen you should have a new template available to you, titled “Air for Android”. Once you have selected your template, you are ready to start building your application.

6. Air Android Settings

On the right hand side of the screen you will see a new setting titled “AIR Android Settings”. Some of the options in here will be required before you are able to publish the app to your phone. Before opening these settings, make sure you have saved your project.

The first page of the settings allows you to name the app, the file name for the app and give it a version number which is required for future updates. Other options here include the aspect ratio, full screen and auto orientation. The render option allows you to render via the devices GPU which can help to optimize the performance of your app.

The next page of the Android settings requires you to create a certificate for your application. Clicking “create” will take you through the setup, and create a file which you will need to save. Then going back to the AIR Android settings the file can be imported. Part of the setup will require you to create a password, which will also be required in the Air Android Settings. It is also useful to select the box to remember the password for the current session. Another handy setting on this page is the option to export the application to your device, and also to launch the application automatically.

The third page of the settings is where you add the icons for your application. You will need to create three different versions of your icon, using different sizes for each of the available devices. The dimensions are 36×36, 48×48 and 72×72.

Finally the last page contains the permissions file required for publishing the app. Here you need to select any of the device components you will be using.

Once complete you can press publish, which will now install and open the application on your Android device.

In the meantime you can view some of my work here

This is another work in progress that will be added to my portfolio shortly. This program reads the smaller thumbnail images from a xml file, and then arranges them by matching the colour to a larger image. More details of the project will be added when i add the finished version to my portfolio.

For one of my current projects I am looking into using augmented reality. This was my first test i ran to setup the stage for what i am working on, i will add more details of the project at a later date.

To try the demo, you will need to download, and print the image below (will be there later today!), then once the page has loaded, hold the image up to a webcam.

This is another of my earlier projects using Papervision, which i created for a university brief based around Making Space. I would have liked to spent more time designing an interesting space for the user to explore, but i only had a week or so to design and build this prototype. I might come back to the project sometime in the future now i have more understading of Papervision, as i wasnt too pleased with the results of this one.

This is part of the development for the most recent project i have completed, which will be added to my portfolio shortly. The finished project is a 3D map, with each country dynamically coloured to represent the current weather. The application then searches on Twitter, to find live information regarding the weather, which is displayed back onto the map, using Googles geolocation service, to display where the tweet has come from.

This part of the development demonstrates the how using Googles geolocator to gain the latitude and longitude of the desired location, i then converted it to a 3d position on the 3D model.

Use the search box to search for an address, town, city, country or continent.

(Button will be sorted out in the next day or 2 if you can see this message!)

A few weeks back i attended the official Papervision training course in Brighton, with Seb Lee Delisle, someone who has inspired me since i first discovered flash a couple of years ago. Although i had already taught myself the basics of Papervision, the course gave me more indepth knowledge of all of the features i can use, i would definatly recommend the course to anyone that is interested.

After completing the first day, i wanted to create something to help me take in what i had learned. This is a simple sound visualizer, that animates shapes in time with the music. I will take this further when i find some more time as i have had always had in interest in sound visualization.

This may take a while to load due to the music attached to the program, please be patient.

Recently i have been experimenting with projectors, seeing what i can do by masking the images onto 3D surfaces. Here i created some visuals using flash, which i then projected onto some munny figures, by Kidrobot, which were posotioned on top of a speaker on my desk.

I am interested in finding out more about 3D mapping of the image so i can have an attempt at a building projection…if anyone knows of any good sources of information for this it would be much appreciated.