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Christian Renner

• December 19, 2024 11:40

Hi,

I am interested in writing extensions for Karoo and have software development experience. However, I have never written Android apps nor worked with Karoo extensions before. Therefore, I have to admit that am struggling with the setup of the extensions library, because I find that the provided documentation is too little for novices (on this specific matter).

I am using macOS with HomeBrew and I would like to use VS code and command line tools for implementation, building, testing, etc. What I did so far:

- I have cloned the Karoo extensions library and copied/clones the template from GitHub.

- I installed the Android SDK through: brew install --cask android-commandlinetools

- I set up the environment variable:  export ANDROID_HOME=/opt/homebrew/share/android-commandlinetools

- Ran sdkmanager --install platform-tools

- Created a GitHub access token and stored the credentials in the local.properties

All of this was a bit of trial and error plus Internet research. This is not user-friendly and I assume either will put a lot of people off, unless they are experienced Android developers.

After all the steps, "./gradlew app:build" I can finally build a project. My next question would be if I can simulate/emulate the result. If so, how does that work. If not, I assume that I need to connect a Karoo, which will most likely need additional steps and tools.

It would be really awesome, if somebody could let me know, you to proceed from here (and it would be cool, if all the required steps would be included in the README of the extensions library).

 

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  Vinapp

  • December 23, 2024 14:04
  • Edited

  Hi Christian. I test directly in karoo devices. To simulate data capture I have created a couple of coroutine flows that send data to my widgets without stay pedaling everytime ;).

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  Christian Renner

  • December 23, 2024 19:54

  Hi Vinapp, thanks for sharing this. Has this impacted battery life for you (since you're charging constantly or keep the device charged for a long time)? How fast is the upload? I am a bit on the fence regarding the Karoo, because I really like the idea of doing my own data fields, but I am not sure if I'll like the development process (and have strong feelings about the way too loud beeper). Anyway, it would be interesting to learn how you do the testing and debugging, so as to not reinvent the wheel. :-)

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