A Break From Active Development

After almost 4 years of developing my Android applications, I am now taking a break from active development of WiFi File Explorer, SECuRET & BabyCam. I'll still be making critical bug fixes as they arise as well as any other necessary maintenance with new Android releases and techniques, but I will not be implementing any new features or requests from users.

I still welcome ideas being sent to me and I keep a to-do list for when/if I do return to actively developing my applications. As more and more people request the same thing, features change in priority on that to-do list until it becomes immediately apparent what I should do next. So thanks for all your ideas that I still frequently receive and they all get duly noted, but as I alluded to, there is no guarantee as to when/if that feature will get implemented.

After spending all that free time developing my applications over the last 4 years, it is now the right time to take a step back, reflect on what I have achieved and enjoy the fruits of my labour. Hopefully I will return to those applications in due time, but for now I am happy concentrating on other projects and spending more time with family and friends!

The Ping Test

A number of my applications (WiFi File Explorer, SECuRET LiveStream and BabyCam Monitor) are all web server based applications (i.e. your Android device acts as a mini web server).  They start up and then prompt you to enter a web address into a web browser on a device on the same network to access the web interface.  Simple enough, but a common problem users email be about is not being able to connect to the application when they actually go to enter the address they have been given.

There are a number of reasons this can happen, and I have already listed out most of those at an article I wrote here at this link.  It's a very useful article and I'd urge you to read it, especially since there are many useful comments from users that have solved the problem in different ways.  However, it's over two years old now, and since writing it I have become better at recognising the cause of problem and finding a much quicker way for you to diagnose it.  So before reading the article linked to above, please read the following...

By far and away, the most common cause of not being able to contact the app when entering the address is simply that your network/router is not configured correctly.  The easy way to determine this is to perform a ping test and the results of this will confirm that or not.  If you don't now how to ping, then read this article.  So just ping the IP address of your Android device from your PC (search Google for how to find out your particular Android device's IP address) and if you don't get a reply, then we can say for certain that your network is not allowing communications between your PC and Android device.  And because these apps all use your local network, this will prevent them from being accessed... so not the apps fault at all!!  If you do get a reply, then your network appears to be OK, and so go back to reading the original article I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

More than likely though, you didn't get a reply in your ping test and the devices can't communicate on your particular network.  In that case, I am afraid it is up to you to figure out what is up with your router/network.  I can't really support you in this case because I have no idea what your network is set up for or what your particular use case for it is, not to mention the many different types of routers on the market than I am not familiar with (I usually forget how to use even my own router!), so I am in no position to offer expert support.  I can however say that a lot of users (more than you probably think) "fix" the issue simply by switching the router off and back on again (I know, right!).  Another common cause can be that you have "Wireless Isolation" (or something named similarly - basically, preventing wireless devices from communicating) enabled on your router, so check that option on your router settings.  Beyond that, I am sure a quick search on Google ("can't ping ip address") will yield enough results to help solve your network configuration problem (that's what I would do anyway).

Hopefully I have provided enough information between this article and the article here for you to be able to support yourself on this one, but if you are still stuck after that or your just need help understanding anything I have already written about, then please feel free to contact me again and I'll try to give you some personal support as soon as I am available.

HTC Thunderbolt Not Recording High Resolution Videos After Gingerbread Update

A few users have contacted me recently stating that after upgrading their HTC Thunderbolt to the latest Gingerbread (Android 2.3) update they can no longer record videos using my camera applications (SECuRET SpyCam/LiveStream/RemoteControl & BabyCam Monitor).  Everything worked perfectly beforehand with Froyo (Android 2.2) but specifically the Gingerbread update seems to have broken something; nothing at all had changed in my camera applications.

The good news is that video recording hasn't been completely broken in my camera applications running on the HTC Thunderbolt!  You can still record using the Low and Default resolutions - just go to Settings -> General -> Video Settings and change the Video Resolution.  It appears that HTC have just broken the High resolution setting.


If you look at the API you can see that Android specify that "Quality levels QUALITY_LOW, QUALITY_HIGH are guaranteed to be supported, while other levels may or may not be supported. "

It seems HTC forgot to adhere to this rule in their Gingerbread update for the Thunderbolt :(

I have done some testing and tried to work around this bug, but I really can't seem to find a solution.  So if you are finding that after the Gingerbread update you can no longer use the High resolution video recording option, I can only suggest that you complain to HTC customer services and report the bug with them and just continue using my applications using the Default or Low resolution settings.  If you have only just bought one of my camera applications and you are running it for the first time on the Gingerbread update then just email me and I can of course process a refund for you.

Motorola Droid Bionic Not Playing Nicely With Camera Applications

A few users of my camera applications (SECuRET SpyCam/LiveStream/RemoteControl & BabyCam Monitor) have reported that the Droid Bionic is having trouble making use of the video recording functionality in those applications.  All other camera functionality seems to work fine (preview, taking photos, streaming) but video recording regularly fails; either creating a blank video file that cannot be played or a video that is highly distorted.

The Droid Bionic is known to have lots of issues and bugs within its camera implementation and Motorola seem to be aware of this.  This is certainly not the first time Motorola have screwed up the camera on one of their devices and probably won't be the last, but hopefully when Google complete their purchase of Motorola they will enforce stricter testing to ensure this doesn't happen again in the future.

So without getting too technical, the Droid Bionic is not accepting the camcorder profiles that it reports it is compatible with.  The native Camera app seems to be unaffected; it's just the API that the developers have to use that seems to be broken.  I have tried to work around the issue to see if I can avoid the bug, but all my attempts and testing showed that it was unavoidable (unless any others developers out there have found a decent workaround?)

So sadly, for now, I have to state that video recording is not possible with my camera applications on the Droid Bionic. You have a choice to either wait for Motorola to apply a fix for the issue, or if you have just recently purchased the application and you really wanted the video recording functionality then I can of course process a refund for you.

Just another reason that I would never recommend to anyone to develop camera based applications for Android ... there's just too many different types of cameras and bugs out there to deal with!

Port Forwarding

A number of my Android applications (WiFi File Explorer, SECuRET LiveStream, BabyCam Monitor and GroovyCam LiveStream) all work by turning an Android device, which is connected to a local WiFi network, into a web server.  This then allows you to connect to it via a web browser on that same local network in order to access the service provided by the application, i.e. file management, video & audio streaming, etc.

So that’s all good and you got it working on your local network, and you’re pretty happy with that.  But wait; now you want someone who’s not on your local network to be able to use the application as well.  For example you may want someone to view the feed from SECuRET LiveStream across the internet.  Well, thanks to ‘port forwarding’ that is entirely possible!

Now, I can’t give you exact step-by-step instructions on how to forward ports for your model of router; there are far too many models available and I simply don’t know how to do it for them all ... hey, I even have to Google up some instructions for how to do it on my router whenever I need to.  But a good place to start to find out how to do it is as http://portforward.com/

What I can do though is tell you want you need to do to accomplish your goal.  Following are some general instructions for forwarding ports on your router to allow the services in my applications to be used across the internet...

Firstly, by configuring your router, you need to forward ports 8000 and 8001 on your router to ports 8000 and 8001 of your Android device, based on the Android device’s IP address.  WiFi File Explorer only uses port 8000 and that number is configurable in the application settings, so you only need to forward this port or whatever you have it configured as.  The other applications will have the ports configurable in the future as well, so depending on when you read this, just bear that in mind.

Once that is done, all you need to do is replace the IP address part of the web URL that the application tells you to enter into your web browser, with the external IP address of your router (one way to find that out is on the main page of the Port Forward website I linked to above).  So for example, the application may tell you to enter something like...

http://192.168.0.3:8000

... where 192.168.0.3 is the IP address of the Android device.  But instead of entering that, if your router’s external IP address is for example, 82.124.321.29, then you (or whomever you want to be able to use the service) would enter...

http://82.124.321.29:8000

... and hey presto, it’s working across the internet!!  Easy huh?!

Now, I realise depending on your level of skill that may not be easy at all, so if you get confused then feel free to email me for more help.  But remember, if it’s something specific to your model of router, I’ll only be using Google to find the answer, just like you would ;)