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The TrackIt software is a mobile application that runs on the Google Android OS. The version that we tested our app on is Android 2.2 API Level 9. We tested the code in both the Mac and Windows environments, using the Eclipse IDE. Thus, our software can run on any computer that utilizes Eclipse packaged with the Android OS SDK (the SDK is provided for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux). Since our software is a mobile app, an emulator is needed to run the software, and these steps will be documented in the next section, "How to Run".
Files and How to Run
Since our software runs on a mobile device, an emulator is needed to run the app on a desktop/laptop. The following steps describe this process:
Download and install the android emulater. We use Droid 2.3 with API level 9.
Load the apk and you should be able to start the application. If you have any trouble Bryan Drake (bdrake@mit.edu) can you help you get this set up.
Source
Source and Eclipse project files are here. TrackIt.zip
Prototype Depth Discussion
Additional Paper Prototype
Before we started development on the computer prototype, we decided to implement an additional paper prototype to address the issues with the final paper prototype for the GR3 assignment. The screenshots of the most recent paper prototype (which was tested on a couple of users) are displayed in the below PDF:
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API Incompatibility and Android Learning Curve
During the testing phases, development we encountered some inconsistent behavior when trying to access the Enter Expenses/Edit Receipts screens. During some testing, the screen would not load up and an error would crash the app. During other testing, the screen loaded up fine and there were no issues with access. A problem could have been with the API Levels being used in the testing, but we could not get conclusive evidence from our testing to determine the true cause of the problem. When working properly, the correct screen would look like this:
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We were unable to get the screen to work in the final version on all machines. The screen should appear as below, but this is still a known and serious issue that we expect you to encounter. The learning curve of Android was steeper than we had expected and we should have allocated more time to this, especially given mobile programming is new to each of us.