Application that syncs users alarms to ring at the same time

[Richard Gonzales]

Hey Guys,

I plan to make an android application where a user can set up an alarm to ring at a specific time that can connect with other users so that their alarms can ring simultaneously.

I would like to know what I should specifically study when it comes to connecting a user with another user so that their alarms ring at the same time and in order for both alarms to stop ringing then a button should be pressed on the screen from both phones.

I am new to android programming but not to Java so any advice on where to look at would be great.

Any links or references would be a great help.

[Pete Letkeman]

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Know your environment, are you making this for Android Wear, Android Auto, Android TV, Android Phone, etc.

Know the oldest version of the Android environment that you are going to support.
    The older the environment the more compatible devices, but the programming for Android 2.3 is different then Android 7.1

There are many tutorials for Android found here https://developer.android.com/ along with API documentations and samples.

There are now two officially Google supported languages for Android development, Java and Kotlin (https://kotlinlang.org).
    You can have both Java and Kotlin in the same project working side by site inside of Android Studio 3.x without any problems.
    I find it very handy to use the Kotlin data class even if everything else is Java.

Android services run in the background and would be helpful for this, see https://developer.android.com/guide/components/services.html

SQLite, https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/sqlite.html, can be used to save your data locally on the Android device.

Notifications, https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications.html, may be needed.

Playing media, https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/mediaplayer.html, may be needed.

[Richard Gonzales]

Pete Letkeman wrote:Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Know your environment, are you making this for Android Wear, Android Auto, Android TV, Android Phone, etc.

Know the oldest version of the Android environment that you are going to support.
    The older the environment the more compatible devices, but the programming for Android 2.3 is different then Android 7.1

There are many tutorials for Android found here https://developer.android.com/ along with API documentations and samples.

There are now two officially Google supported languages for Android development, Java and Kotlin (https://kotlinlang.org).
    You can have both Java and Kotlin in the same project working side by site inside of Android Studio 3.x without any problems.
    I find it very handy to use the Kotlin data class even if everything else is Java.

Android services run in the background and would be helpful for this, see https://developer.android.com/guide/components/services.html

SQLite, https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/sqlite.html, can be used to save your data locally on the Android device.

Notifications, https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications.html, may be needed.

Playing media, https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/mediaplayer.html, may be needed.

thank you, for your response.
Excellent, I'll definitely look into this.
I think the hardest part would be syncing phones together so that they can ring simultaneously.

[Pete Letkeman]

Richard Gonzales wrote:I think the hardest part would be syncing phones together so that they can ring simultaneously.

If I recall correctly, at a Google I/O event (or something similar) a number of years ago Google demonstrated synchronizing a stop watch app on two Android phones.
You could start the app on device A and the stop watch time would be synchronized on device B and this was each app was correct to within five seconds...however network traffic may interfere.

[Pete Letkeman]

Pete Letkeman wrote:You could start the app on device A and the stop watch time would be synchronized on device B and this was each app was correct to within five seconds...however network traffic may interfere.

Staring around 35 minutes or so into the video and going for about ten minutes

Here is a write up about this https://bradablog.appspot.com/?p=207
This may help give you a few ideas/hints on how you could do things,

[Richard Gonzales]

Pete Letkeman wrote:

Pete Letkeman wrote:You could start the app on device A and the stop watch time would be synchronized on device B and this was each app was correct to within five seconds...however network traffic may interfere.

Staring around 35 minutes or so into the video and going for about ten minutes

Here is a write up about this https://bradablog.appspot.com/?p=207
This may help give you a few ideas/hints on how you could do things,

Yeah! I want to do something similar to this.
Hopefully by now it got a bit easier to implement.
Awesome, this will definitely help!

Thanks again