Sorry for the delay in replying, but this weekend I did some thing
radical. Rather than looking at a screen, I went sailing....
Amazon Fire OS is a branch the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). As I
understand it the major things that Amazon have done with their Fire OS
is deny users access to Googles Play Store, forcing them to use the
Amazon AppStore instead. They also impose their Silk web browser and
give no option to install alternative launchers. In effect binding the
user to a portal for their retail environment.
Perhaps its not worth investing much effort into my experience as the
5th generation Fire tablet I tested on, has the Fire OS replaced SlimROM
OS, which is again based on Android 5.1 from AOSP. The inconsistent Auto
rota behaviour across the home screen tabs is perhaps the only
significant thing.
I have a second 5th gen Fire tablet still running its original OS. Will
try to install you app, and let you know if I there is any change in
behaviour.
Ah!, well spotted, as a bit of a cheat I have locked most of the
activities in the app to portrait so I don't have to cater for each
activity restarting every time the user changes orientation.
Now, I don't know anything about Kindle hardware so I will look into
that. What's the main differences between Android on, say, my Nexus and
on your Kindle? As far as I know Kindle is customised by Amazon and so
might not use the same API's? Like I say, I'll do some research.
This could work. I think there are app already out there that allow you to click boats that are already in the system. The dynamic UI with groups of boats is an interesting thought. I think you’d have to be quite tech savvy to handle this. I need to cater for OD’s that are on duty once or twice a year and were not brought up with touchscreens. This means I have to keep it very simple, and not require any pre-configuration. That way they can turn up on the day, switch everything on and go, without any consideration of entering details prior to the race starting.
With bigger clubs I imagine this could work. For now though, I need to pass or fail the keypad entry system. I might add timing capability to that if it proves feasible.
Thanks for the information. I hope to get a feel for the suitability of the keypad sail number entry and then may proceed to enhancing the app and take care to make sure it works across more devices. I do embedded electronics for a living so writing apps is not second nature at the moment. It’s baby steps at the moment.
Sorry about the delay, I’ve been doing lots of sailing and not had time to look at the Nexus until now. It’s a 2012 model I now think, it’s running Android 5.1.1. Jellybean and says its up to date. As far as I can see on the web its not advisable to update to 6.0.1 for my version. Apparently there were 70 million built worldwide but I wouldn’t spend any time investigating the Nexus problem on your test App on my account.
I have a Nexus 2013 7" running Android 6.0.1 Marshmellow and it works OK. Can you tell me what version of Android you have please? If you go to Settings>About tablet you should see the version number. It has to be 4.3 or higher. If it’s below this you are running an old version of Android operating system and should upgrade.
The idea behind the app is to leave capturing times to external hardware for accuracy, that way the sail numbers can be entered on the app even before a boat has finished. As long as the order they are captured in is the same order as the finish times then the two will synchronise. It’s all rather experimental however at this stage.