I managed to get my hands on a Google Glass Explorer kit R2 last week!
Last week in the post – all the way from Minneapolis Fishbowl HQ arrived my Google Glass Kit. I’ve been fortunate and had the opportunity to play around and try these out thanks to the Oracle AppsLab Team sporting theirs at many of the Oracle events; but never the opportunity to write an app.
So as you can imagine ideas began forming – what could I develop with these?
Read on to find out some of my first experiences developing for Google Glass using Cordova.
So the first thing – why not push Fishbowl Connect (Fishbowl Solutions Hybrid Cordova based Android App) onto Google Glass and see what happens.. “Gulp”!
Plugged in Google Glass installed the drivers –
Android SDK Manager
Checked to see if Glass was detected –
adb devices
Then side loaded Fishbowl Connect into the Google Glass.
adb install fishbowlConnect.apk
The app installed successfully but unfortunately nothing displayed under the installed app list.
Next step update the Cordova app with Google Glass plugin -https://github.com/aphex/cordova-glass-core
Provided by the clever guys at Sencha.
cordova plugin add https://github.com/aphex/cordova-glass-core
Updated the {app}/platforms/android/res/values/glass.xml
<string name="app_launch_voice_trigger">Launch Fishbowl Connect</string>
Package and side load the app in!
Using the voice command –
“OK Glass, Launch Fishbowl Connect”
Wow, it works!.. Well, when I say works – the voice command “Launch Fishbowl Connect” is recognised and it displays the first screen of Fishbowl Connect (Win!) but the problem is that there’s no screen touch support with glass. (don’t try it! you might poke your eye out).
With Glass you just get the following inputs voice commands and gesture support via the touch pad (tap, longpress, swipeup, swipeleft, swiperight, twotap, twolongpress, twoswipeup, twoswipedown, twoswipeleft, twoswiperight, threetap, threelongpress).
Luckily with adaptive design it was possible to extend the app and supply a new set of templates targeted and loaded for Glass to allow you swipe through the Fishbowl Connect options.
It’s still early days for Fishbowl Connect and Google Glass but its a great start. And as ADF-Mobile is cordova based it should be possible to install it onto Google Glass unfortunately the AMX view don’t support the gestures but I wouldn’t be surprised if Oracle have been working on that behind the scenes just waiting to release a wearables interface for ADF-Mobile.. Not only for Google Glass but other wearable devices smart watches etc…
Conclusion
If your familiar with developing apps for Android when you jump over to Glass, well at least for me the experience of writing/migrating an existing app was very very easy!.
