Darting and Fluttering around Android

Looking for Android tools and libraries has led me to the Flutter UI Framework, which looks to be Google's dice throw for the "next big thing".  I personally like Dart as a language, and anything less verbose and simpler than Java is a plus.

After working with Android Studio a while, I discovered I am more productive with vim and the command line.  Flutter environment supports a lot of development functionality with the flutter command, and so my long term habits of edit -> make -> test fit right in.

Getting up to speed in a new and rapidly changing development environment is always broadening, and I am happy to find many different approaches to design.  It looks like a lot has been learned from the Javascript struggles, and flutter seems to have a decent versioning/packaging/distribution system in place, using git.

So I am further down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, and learning about Material Design, Reactive Programming for Dart, and the BloC Design pattern.

Once I digest this and become productive, it's back to the ArdOsc Android app to rewrite it in Flutter with Material Design, and try to get it working on the iPad as well.

Android in Wonderland

Modern software development is a complex task, and having an IDE that guides the developer can make this a bit more directed.  I imported the ardmix github java code into Android Studio 3.2 and converted it to kotlin, just to make life interesting.  The syntax is similar to java, but cleaner, and has a more modern feel.  Android Studio considers this a first class language and I was able to compile and run the app after a bit of tweaking.  I will not miss Java, and suspect Google feels the same.

The source is posted on gitlab ardosc, under the GPL3+ license.  It uses an OSC Library called NetUtil to handle the UDP communication to Ardour.  The java sources for de.sciss.net NetUtil were developed by Hanns Holger Rutz and licensed under LGPL 2.1 or later.  The original sources can be found at https://github.com/Sciss/NetUtil/.

I plan to release this as a free Google Play store app with no strings once I am finished testing, and will be using the app with the RPi3 in the field as part of the tests.  There is more conversion to do from Java idioms to Kotlin, as I begin to be comfortable with the syntax and best practices.  The mechanical conversion compiled and ran but lint finds lots of fluff and I know it can be much cleaner.

Initial Plan: Hardware and Software acquisition and integration

Here is my initial plan to further my goal of recording high quality audio on the Raspberry Pi 3.

1. Select and acquire necessary initial hardware.  Keep it minimal.
2. Identify and download necessary software resources.  Multiple options to explore.
3. Assemble initial hardware.
4. Build/configure initial software.
5. Integrate and confirm operation of base system.

Once the initial Raspberry Pi 3 is running Raspbian there will be an iterative process consisting of the following steps.

1. Test functionality of current hardware and software.
2. Correct any issues discovered in testing.
3. If not more issues, acquire and integrate additional components.

Testing will include functional testing to validate operation and performance testing to determine what limits exist in the hardware and software configuration.

The hardware/software system phases I currently envision will proceed as follows.

1. Base Raspberry Pi 3 with no customization
2. Cirrus Logic Audio Card integration
3. Touchscreen display integration
4. Battery power

I plan to do all this in a Linux environment as I have no desire or capability to run Windows.