PhotoNetic

Goal and vision

The main goal of the project is to use the geo-tagging concept from Android photos to create an overlay of the timestamp and/or google maps location on the photo so that more information can be shared with the photo when it is sent to another device.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Camera App that places an overlay of GPS coordinates, current time, and additional text when the phone camera takes a photo.

GoogleMaps API

GeoCoder

As part of the GoogleMaps API, the GeoCoder function is used to recall the current location's longitude and latitude. The GoogleMaps GeoCoder can also do the reverse GeoCoding feature of converting the location's longitude and latitude to an address, which was used to create the location text overlay.

MapView

To extract the map fragment view, a MapView was created by accessing the LiteMode feature of GoogleMaps API. The lite mode allows for a static capture of the current view, while the map is hidden in the background. The purpose of the map overlay function of this app was to present a static image of the current location.

Challenges

Bitmap implementation overlay

Painting on a bitmap proved challenging to create the correct boundaries for each combination, however once the coordinates were realized, a problem arose with sending the bitmap efficiently across activities.. This also proved challenging as it takes a lot of memory to store a bitmap. The resulting method was to convert the bitmap into a string using base64 encoding, then decoding the string back into the original bitmap when it was displayed. As for storage method, each bitmap in the ArrayList would be converted into a string, then added to a different array, then finally converted to Json format using the Gson class. The storage method was then reversed to achieve the original bitmap image to display when necessary.

GalleryAdapter

Creating a Gallery proved difficult for this assignment as a custom GalleryAdapter had to be made to provide functionality for the images. I had to implement a custom interface for the onClick and onLongClick listeners to work, which was not obvious at first. Overall implementing the custom gallery took the largest amount of time for the project, and it could have been spent elsewhere such as connecting a database to the app and sorting photos based on location or additional functionalities of the app could have been explored.

FUNCTIONALITY

Main Activity

Capture: Loads Camera view, Changes button mode to Back/Save.

Gallery: Sends photo and view to Gallery Activity.

Save: Saves photo in main activity, Changes button mode to Capture/Gallery.

Back: Returns to Capture/Gallery Button mode.

Map: Adds overlay of static map.

Timestamp: Adds timestamp text overlay.

Location: Adds location text overlay

Gallery Activity

Click on photo to expand.

Long Click on photo to delete.

Pressing Back sends view to previous activity, or hides the expanded photo.

Software

Android Studios, Google Maps API

Hardware

GPS

DEMONSTRATION

Want to demo that time and location information can be sent with the photo, that the photo can be saved in the gallery, and that there is a decent level of custom options.

Best Case

Basic functionality where the time and location can be sent with the image and advanced functions including text overlays and custom positioning.

Worst Case

Only showing the timestamp over photos when sending the image to a device.