Quakecenter is a android and android wear app that locates earthquakes from all around the world. The assignment entailed pulling data from the usgs, using google maps to display the earthquakes location, and twitter to pull (hopefully) relevant images to display. In order to connect the watch and the phone, I used the data layer to send messages between the two devices. On the mobile side, I used an array adapter to update my list view, and multiple activities to handle the map and twitter. On the wear side, I kept everything in one activity, and relied on notifications to update the user. In terms of design, I attempted a modern serious look that went along with the scientific and potentially dangerous nature of earthquakes.
Here’s the main view. A list of the most recent earthquakes.
If a user clicks on an earthquake, or a new one appears, the map is opened on the phone, and a notification appears on the watch.
If the user opens the notification, they are brought to a view that allows them to shake the watch to see pictures.
upon shake, a picture is loaded on the phone, this can be repeated as many times as the user wants. However, some locations have only a limited amount of photos, so sometimes none will be available. Additionally, extra information (in this case, the related tweet) will be shown on the watch.
Lastly, the user can dismiss the photos by clicking the button, which brings the phone app back to the main list of earthquakes.
Here’s the video!
**Note: There's a problem with the USGS api where if you request a limit of 5 earthquakes, it doesn't always have the newest one, but requesting a limit of 1 does. As such, recent, but not brand new earthquake sometimes appear on launch. This can be seen in a good way as the user is caught up on the most recent earthquake.
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