Tag Archives: mit appinventor

Using droid-at-screen to see your phone’s display on your computer

droid-at-screen is a free Java-based app that displays the content of your phone’s display to your computer’s display, when the phone is connected via a USB cable.

Below is a screen snap shot taken from my computer display. At the upper left is the Droid@Screen application running.  Droid@Screen is connected to my Nexus 5 phone.

At right is the display showing on my phone, which has been transferred from the phone to my computer over a USB connection. I’ve circled two user interface items – the magnifying glass icon is used to adjust the display size of the phone’s screen. Since the phone has a 1920×1080 display, the initial image is quite large!

Below that is a camera icon. Click on that to take a snapshot of what is on the screen, and then save the screen image to a local file.

Capture

At the lower left is the DroidAtScreen .jar file. This is the Java executable program file. Assuming Java is installed on your system, double click the .jar file to begin running Droid@Screen.

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Implementing an “Array” in App Inventor

What is an “Array”?

An array is a variable data type that stores a collection of values referenced by an index number.

For example, suppose we wished to store the names of the 12 months of the year: January, February, March, … , November, December so we can convert a month number to a text name. Month 1 converts to “January”, Month 2 converts to “February” and Month 12 converts to “December”.

An easy way to do this conversion is to set up an array that, in concept, looks something like this:

Month[1] = “January”
Month[2] = “February”
Month[3] = “March”
Month[4] = “April”
Month[5] = “May”
Month[6] = “June”
Month[7] = “July”
Month[8] = “August”
Month[9] = “September”
Month[10] = “October”
Month[11] = “November”
Month[12] = “December”

Month is the name of this variable – but unlike other variables, this one stores 12 separate values. Each value is referenced by using an index – if the index value is 2, then Month[index] refers to “February”.

If we have a date, such as (US-style) – 2/14/15, meaning February 15, 2015, we can convert the month number of 2, into the text month name by referencing Month[2].

If you have studied algebra math or beyond, you have encountered array variables such as X1, X2, X3, … Xn where the value Xi is read as “X subscript i”. This is the same concept as an array of values. If you have not studied algebra, this notation may be new to you. 

Most programming languages support an array variable type but App Inventor does not support arrays. Yet arrays are a convenient way of storing and working with some types of data. To support an array-like variable in App Inventor, we can use a list and map the array subscript to an index position in the list.  By hiding this within a couple of procedures, we can simulate the array variable type.

Sample User Interface

I created a simple app to demonstrate the use and implementation of the array. You can download this app from the MIT App Inventor Gallery here.

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