iPhone and Android Phone Owners?!

[Terrormaster]

Hey was wondering if there were any iPhone or Android phone owners out there in the haunt community?

I'm getting into Android development and was wondering if there was anything that the haunter would like to have handy on their phones. Can be anything from game, to cool time wasting toy, to useful utility.

[Johnny Thunder]

Very cool – I love my Droid, and would love for more ways to waste time on it :)

[Dixie]

Jaybo and I are both Android... I on the G1, he has the Cliq.

For me personally, I really missed not having a Halloween countdown app... and I will keep thinking of anything else that would be cool, and haunt/prop building related.

Good luck to you in your new dev projects!! Can't wait to see what you come up with... Halloween and Android are my two favorite topics!

[HauntedHacienda]

I was planning on getting an iPhone for Christmas from Craigslist for $83.00 for a Ghost Investigations Gadget, called the iOvilus.
Also, there is a Ghost Detector one that I also want, so I can have my Ghost Investigations Toys on it as additional Equipment, in relation to my growing cache of Tools and Equipment.
Although I think Halloween Apps and Christmas Apps would be a natural fit.

[charlie]

Good luck with the development. I've actually been developing for iPhone for about 6 months.

Free plug -

http://www.martbingo.com
http://www.theidiotcard.com
http://www.fartcount.com

---

I thought that a haunted house finder with a rating system would be a sweet and useful app. Not much opportunity for profit for the developer - but having a web based database that would allow haunters to put in their local haunt info and have it be searchable would be nice for the community.

[Terrormaster]

Hopefully if things play out right I'll be picking up an HTC Droid ERIS by end of year. Fingers crossed.

For me personally, I really missed not having a Halloween countdown app... and I will keep thinking of anything else that would be cool, and haunt/prop building related.

Actually will probably tackle this one first. I've mostly been a C#, VB6, and JavaScript kinda developer over the years so just getting my feet wet with real Java. I already have a snippet of JavaScript code used for the Halloween countdown on my webpage. Being that JavaScript is syntactically the same as Java it should port over without much fuss. Think I'll spend some time with it this weekend.

Also, there is a Ghost Detector one that I also want, so I can have my Ghost Investigations Toys on it as additional Equipment.

I'm actually curious how that app works myself as the iPhone really doesn't have any sensors on it that would be conducive to ghost detection. I like the idea though and will have to investigate further.

I thought that a haunted house finder with a rating system would be a sweet and useful app. Not much opportunity for profit for the developer - but having a web based database that would allow haunters to put in their local haunt info and have it be searchable would be nice for the community.

This is actually one I've been toying with in the back of my head. Not so worried about profit. I don't build stuff like this with expectations of making money. Which is why I've been leaning on Android and the whole open-source thing for a while now. I just wanna make stuff people find useful, if they wanna gimme money for it I won't turn it down though hehehe.

[Terrormaster]

I need to contact ZombieTronix as well and see if they'd be interested in working with me on converting the biped calculator on their site into an Android app.

[BackYardHaunter]

aww i would love to get a iphone. i know people that have them. there super nice. cant really afford it with all this halloween stuff i want. lol

[hedg12]

You could write an app for the PC to control a Kit74, and another for the phone to trigger the individual relays. That way a haunter could use the relay to trigger props. He/she could walk around the yard and be able to trigger any one of 8 props remotely.

[Terrormaster]

hedg, that's a pretty shweet idea. I'll jot that one down.

[Terrormaster]

Anyone got any other ideas?

[Offwhiteknight]

Hard to say. I just got my iPhone a week and ago and I'm still playing with the various apps, thinking of new ones I want as I go along. I downloaded the DirecTV app to set my DVR at home when I realized I'd forgotten to program "My Name is Bruce" and I was at Knott's Merry Farm...

I'm sure if this thread gets zombified in a few months I will have thoughts then...

[steveshauntedyard]

Just downloaded a halloween app from crackberry.com for my blackberry.

[Terrormaster]

Alrighty, had been sitting on my ass on this one but finally got around to putting something together. None-the-less the Halloween Countdown Widget is up and running on my phone. I haven’t put the APK up on the Android market yet - running some battery tests to see if the widget updating every second puts a drain on the battery.

I’m not certain about the pumpkin on the left or the blood font at the top. Open to criticism and suggestions.

Don't think it's ready for primetime yet but if any Android users out there wanna give it a whirl I can hook you up with the APK to manually install it.

http://necropolislabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/halloween-screen.png

[Kaoru]

Looks good when it looks like that on your screencap. Still think you might want to do a simple and sick Halloween game of some sort. ;)

[Dixie]

Hey Terror, how is the battery drain test going? I would be interested in it if it updated only by the minute, or even by the hour.... I think it looks great, and have a place on my right screen cleared off if you would let me run it!

(PS, as for comments, I really like the font, its a good contrast to the rest of the widget, and I really like how clean and easy to read it is... I could live without the pumpkin though, it kind of looks cut off - would be just as great without it.)

[Terrormaster]

Thanks Dixie for the comments. The Eris is notorious for poor battery performance unless it's tweaked a bit (mostly due to HTC's Sense UI). I did notice a little bit of a faster drain though with this running. Normally I'm just under 60% at the end of the day but now it's a lot closer to 50% and maybe a tad under on average.

I'm toying with a different approach which involves 12 or so pumpkins in varying stages of growth and decay (one image per month and several for October). Essentially Nov-Mar would be decay. Then from Apr-Sep it would be growth. Then in October it would change weekly slowly turning into a JoL with the eyes being lit after 5pm Halloween and burning out over time. Underneath would be a day counter.

That would be the widget. If you run it as an App you'd get the days:hours:mins:secs counter at he top with maybe some other fun Halloween stuff I'd add over time (perhaps a soundboard or something).

I'm interested in doing a soundboard, most of the ones I've seen for Android have some decent sound but the UI's have all been poorly done. That's generally the problem with the open-source crowd (and where Apple has a one up) - 90% developers, 6% designers, 4% both.

[DarkLore]

I'd go for a wireless controller for X10s. Something that would allow each button associated with an x10 to be labeled.

[Terrormaster]

As long as the X10 can be communicated with via WiFi A/B/G/N or BlueTooth I don't see why that's not possible to do.

On that note, there was a few household appliances shown off at CES that were Android powered. Since Android happily runs on ARM chipsets I can see potential for an entirely Android based microcomputer sitting on ARM that's designed specifically as a prop controller. Wrap an Android API around that, a standard for wiring the controller to various props, and the ability to build any app on it... You'd be talking the ultimate in prop control.

[Warrant2000]

Silly game idea: using the inclinometer (I think that's what you call it - that thing in the phone that senses when it's tipped or shaken), have balls (in the form of pumpkins or zombie heads) floating on the screen, and the goal is to tilt the phone to get the balls into a hole, through a door, onto a tot, etc. Increasingly hard levels can include electric fences that vaporize your ball.

I like the idea of a ghost detector, possibly using the same sensor as above to produce desired effects. Various skins for the display could be used...hi-tech, retro, alien, Aztec, etc.

[Terrormaster]

Ok, revisiting the countdown. Have all 13 background images prepped up and just need a revisit to the code. Dumped the pumpkin idea and decided to go with the classic skull, book, and candle thing. The candle burns down from month to month with a special version for 1031. Here's a preview on how it will look:

http://necropolislabs.com/images/countdownpreview.png

I've also come up with a couple time wasting activities that I'll tackle soon.

[Devils Chariot]

Coolness terrormaster, i will have to go buy one of the new fangled phones!

[Terrormaster]

Well folks, my first app ever, The Halloween Countdown Widget, is up on the Google App store for your consumption (see this thread for details (http://www.hauntforum.com/showthread.php?t=20309&highlight=iphone)) - it's priced just right for haunters, FREE.

It tested pretty well on my HTC Droid Eris but I'd be interested in hearing how it fairs on other Android devices.

I'm planning out my next major app which should be a fun little time waster so stay tuned. I got a little laundry list of ideas and concepts but i'd be very interested in hearing from other haunters what kinda things they'd like for their Android phones or maybe something you saw on a friend or relatives iPhone that you'd like to see come to Android.

[Terrormaster]

Hey haunters. Heads up (or off), got another app coming down the pipes that should launch this weekend providing I can get in the tweaks I've got lined up. This one's a tiny bit of a collaborative effort in the sense that I've been given the blessing to go forward with it.

And yes, I'm still poking around for more suggestions so if ya got em share em.

-TM

[BillyC333]

I have a Droid running DroidMod, OC'd at 800mhz, with JIT enabled.

No idea's for development though.