MyScanner - New android app

Status
Not open for further replies.

bondi

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
15
Location
Maia, Portugal
Hi guys,

Just released my latest app, MyScanner.
You can download it on Google Play

I appreciate if you guys could help me make it better by giving some feedback.
Thanks.
 

ProScan

Software Provider
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 2, 2006
Messages
7,409
Location
Ontario, Calif.
As far as I know, there's no tags available on the Audio API I have access to.
If that get's available I'll try my best to add it.

This is where you have to go to work as a programmer. Read the icy-metaint header then access the audio bytes and extract the tag. 1st byte is length of tag. It's not difficult.
 

w2xq

Mentor
Joined
Jul 13, 2004
Messages
2,323
Location
Burlington County, NJ
First impressions.

It took awhile for me to realize that the horizontal menu TOP50... actually slid to the right... to RAIL. Perhaps add a < or > to appear as appropriate?

Searching turns up unexpected results (or it needs a help file/explanation). Looking for "burlington nj" returned items in WI, CA and elsewhere. Only 'Burlington Area Storm Spotters' in Racine had 'burlington' in the name. Searching on "nj" yielded nothing.

Looking under one of the menu choices -- RAIL -- shows feeds from all over the country.

Maybe it is just me, but I like to drill down by location: country->state->county to find a feed.

HTH a bit.
 

KD2DLL

Active Member
Feed Provider
Joined
Dec 11, 2009
Messages
629
Location
Rotterdam, New York
I just downloaded it and so far it works good. Took a bit to figure things out. What are your plans with this? Like what new features and changes do you plan to make in the coming updates?
 

bondi

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
15
Location
Maia, Portugal
This is where you have to go to work as a programmer. Read the icy-metaint header then access the audio bytes and extract the tag. 1st byte is length of tag. It's not difficult.

Thanks, will send you a PM about this.
 

bondi

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
15
Location
Maia, Portugal
First impressions.

It took awhile for me to realize that the horizontal menu TOP50... actually slid to the right... to RAIL. Perhaps add a < or > to appear as appropriate?

Searching turns up unexpected results (or it needs a help file/explanation). Looking for "burlington nj" returned items in WI, CA and elsewhere. Only 'Burlington Area Storm Spotters' in Racine had 'burlington' in the name. Searching on "nj" yielded nothing.

Looking under one of the menu choices -- RAIL -- shows feeds from all over the country.

Maybe it is just me, but I like to drill down by location: country->state->county to find a feed.

HTH a bit.

Thanks for taking the time to review the app.
It took awhile for me to realize that the horizontal menu TOP50... actually slid to the right... to RAIL. Perhaps add a < or > to appear as appropriate?

This is standard android tab behavior.

Searching turns up unexpected results (or it needs a help file/explanation). Looking for "burlington nj" returned items in WI, CA and elsewhere. Only 'Burlington Area Storm Spotters' in Racine had 'burlington' in the name. Searching on "nj" yielded nothing.

Hmm, just tested going to Menu then Search then US->New Jersey->Burlington, all the Burlington's feeds did appear.
The search icon on the actionbar(top) is only going to filter the results you are already seeing. This means that if you selected a different state or are in a top50 tab(top50, public safety, rail , etc) that hasn't Burlington there, you won't get that result filtered.
Going the country->state->county get's all your results for that area.

When searching for ex: "nj" try and search "new" or "jersey" and it will get you the results you want as long as the feed is available in that tab.
Thank you again for your feedback.
 

bondi

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
15
Location
Maia, Portugal
I just downloaded it and so far it works good. Took a bit to figure things out. What are your plans with this? Like what new features and changes do you plan to make in the coming updates?

Thanks for using the app.
Right now I'm trying to see if there's any bugs.
Then will try to add some features like pause button on the notification, include a search for nearby feeds(when that's available on the API), a more direct feed search(instead on clicking the search icon to filter results already available, the search will get you results directly from the API, when that's available on the API) and a few more features.
Of course will listening to features requests from you and others so you guys can enjoy using it.
Thanks.
 

KD2DLL

Active Member
Feed Provider
Joined
Dec 11, 2009
Messages
629
Location
Rotterdam, New York
If it would be possible to eventually add feed archives that would be nice, As well as eventually adding it to the App Store. Im sure you will open up to a whole new market of customers there. I know thats a lot of work to transition to there but its something to look into
 

w2xq

Mentor
Joined
Jul 13, 2004
Messages
2,323
Location
Burlington County, NJ
Wirelessly posted (Moto Droid Bionic: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.4; en-us; DROID BIONIC Build/6.7.2-223_DBN_M4-23) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

I didn't realize there was a Menu with options. I was trying to use the Search on the action bar. Sorry about that.

Perhaps adding a 'Location' pick to the action bar-- leading to the drill-down I was looking for -- would help someone like me.

HTH.
 

KD0TAZ

Member
Feed Provider
Joined
Dec 26, 2010
Messages
334
Location
Kansas
Hmm, just tested going to Menu then Search then US->New Jersey->Burlington, all the Burlington's feeds did appear.
The search icon on the actionbar(top) is only going to filter the results you are already seeing. This means that if you selected a different state or are in a top50 tab(top50, public safety, rail , etc) that hasn't Burlington there, you won't get that result filtered.
Going the country->state->county get's all your results for that area.

When searching for ex: "nj" try and search "new" or "jersey" and it will get you the results you want as long as the feed is available in that tab.
Thank you again for your feedback.

To be honest that's not really how a search feature should work. Search should be global and return hits within all categories. At the very least you should be able to search for matches at the state level without having to go to county - because at the county level there's really nothing to filter, it's already narrowed down pretty well. As is, the search function is relatively useless..

Thanks for using the app.
Right now I'm trying to see if there's any bugs.
Then will try to add some features like pause button on the notification, include a search for nearby feeds(when that's available on the API), a more direct feed search(instead on clicking the search icon to filter results already available, the search will get you results directly from the API, when that's available on the API) and a few more features.
Of course will listening to features requests from you and others so you guys can enjoy using it.
Thanks.

The "Nearby" and global search features are already available in the API. A couple scanners (like Scanner Radio Pro) already incorporate them.

You should also consider changing the non-descript unlabeled top menu button to something more intuitive. There really isn't any indication that it's a button.. Especially considering that it's the button you have to press in order to get out of the "Top 50" section and into the normal operation menus. It's just not what you expect to see in an important button.. Yes there's the < next to it, but I took it as requiring a swipe to the left to make it do something - which of course doesn't do anything.

Other than that I don't see anything glaring at me. It's a nice UI, especially with the dark theme (although there's a quick flash of the white theme on startup before it switches to black, which just makes it look a bit unrefined - it's something that'll only bother people like me who are OCD :D). Sound is good.

We are ALL looking for a scanner that does alpha tags. Right now there is only one that works so-so, and it doesn't have live access to the list of feeds (the list is baked into the app, and it's WAY out of date at this point). So if you can do it, you're guaranteed to have LOTS of buyers. I'm pledging my purchase right now if you can get it to work. :)
 
Last edited:

bondi

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
15
Location
Maia, Portugal
If it would be possible to eventually add feed archives that would be nice, As well as eventually adding it to the App Store. Im sure you will open up to a whole new market of customers there. I know thats a lot of work to transition to there but its something to look into

Hi, feed archives are available on the Pro version.
 

bondi

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
15
Location
Maia, Portugal
To be honest that's not really how a search feature should work. Search should be global and return hits within all categories. At the very least you should be able to search for matches at the state level without having to go to county - because at the county level there's really nothing to filter, it's already narrowed down pretty well. As is, the search function is relatively useless..

I know what you mean and I agree with you but the problem is that I've asked(also the author of Scanner Radio asked too) that search be implemented and Lindsay said they would do it after the transition. So I'm waiting for that moment to add a proper search function.


The "Nearby" and global search features are already available in the API. A couple scanners (like Scanner Radio Pro) already incorporate them.

It's not available on the API right now, I've asked Lindsay to Include it and I'm hoping after the transition this get included. you can check what's available in the API to me right now by checking this pdf :http://wiki.radioreference.com/images/a/ae/RRaudioAPI_1.1.pdf

You should also consider changing the non-descript unlabeled top menu button to something more intuitive. There really isn't any indication that it's a button.. Especially considering that it's the button you have to press in order to get out of the "Top 50" section and into the normal operation menus. It's just not what you expect to see in an important button.. Yes there's the < next to it, but I took it as requiring a swipe to the left to make it do something - which of course doesn't do anything.

I see what you mean about the "non descriptive" button.
Checkout Android Design Guidelines regarding that icon. Look at Google+ app, the only difference is that they put a house to declare it "home". The Prixing app is a good example of this. I might change the icon so it's easier for the users to find the sliding menu.

Other than that I don't see anything glaring at me. It's a nice UI, especially with the dark theme (although there's a quick flash of the white theme on startup before it switches to black, which just makes it look a bit unrefined - it's something that'll only bother people like me who are OCD :D). Sound is good.

I know what you mean about the flash. The problem is that ActionBarSherlock/Holoeverywhere library used to make me define in the manifest a "starting" theme and then I change it to the theme the user as selected. If I don't select the starting theme, a black theme will appear and then changed to the users selected theme. Don't know which is better. Will try to get a workaround but I don't know when...

We are ALL looking for a scanner that does alpha tags. Right now there is only one that works so-so, and it doesn't have live access to the list of feeds (the list is baked into the app, and it's WAY out of date at this point). So if you can do it, you're guaranteed to have LOTS of buyers. I'm pledging my purchase right now if you can get it to work. :)

Hmmm. I'll ask Lindsay when that will be available in the API so I can include it or a way to do it without accessing the API I'm using.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
If you have more questions, please say so.
Regards.
 

mitzip

Member
Joined
Dec 15, 2012
Messages
5
On my nexus 7 it never stops "loading countries" tapping "search" from left swipe accessible menu.

Also, accidentally found left swipe menu, couldn't find how to search vs filter results for the longest time.

Overall, great start. Some people don't like having several apps that do basically the same thing available, I think the competition drives innovation... Gplay store is a great example of that.

--------------------
Sent from my tablet. Please excuse my brevity, spelling and grammar.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top