THE REMOTE CONTROL FOR ANDROID OPERATING SYSTEM HAS BEEN UPDATED

Fig. 1: Initial authentication screen.

At first you need to authenticate with your Google account.

Fig. 2: Settings screen.

When you log in for the first time, you need to enter the values "Workspace folder", "Remote control ID", "Data update in seconds", "Max operations on Drive" (maximum number of files read simultaneously from Google Drive), "Max simultaneous commands" (maximum number of commands sent simultaneously to Google Drive) and press "Set Values." You can set the language to English or Italian. Clicking "Log out" will disconnect your Google account, while clicking "Close application" will exit the application without logging out.

Fig. 3: "On - Off" screen.

In this screen there are buttons to send commands to the devices.

Fig. 4: "Dashboard" screen.

Device information is displayed here.

THE MAIN ALGORITHM OF THE APPLICATION

Going into more detail, once you log in (fig. 1) and enter the required information in the settings screen (fig. 2), the application cyclically runs the following algorithm:

Fig. 5: algorithm executed repeatedly by the application.

In the figs. 2, 3 and 4 the numbers to the right of the writing "STATUS ALGORITHM OF REMOTE CONTROL" are worth:

• 1 during reading files on Google Drive;

• 2 during the updating of the "On-Off" and "Dashboard" screens;

• 3 during pause.

Commands are sent when the numbers considered above are 2 or 3. The pause depends on the "Data update in seconds" value. The final cycle can be interrupted by pressing the "Log out" or "Close application" button. An example of a workspace folder at the end of the third step of the algorithm is shown in fig. 6,

Fig. 8: Example of a workspace folder with commands and ack.

WHAT HAPPENS IF MULTIPLE DEVICES HAVE THE SAME ID

If there are multiple "Files of device" with the same ID in a workspace folder, the application will block as in fig. 9 until the problem is solved.

Fig. 9: screen from the application in the presence of identical "Device file".

AND FINALLY

The values displayed in the "Dashboard" screen (fig. 4) are those defined in the "values: " rows of the device files  (fig. 7). 

In the settings screen it is best to avoid entering too large values for "Max operations on Drive" and "Max simultaneous commands."

Multiple remote controls are allowed in a workspace but only one can operate at a time.

The "Reset workspace" button in the settings screen (fig. 2) is used to delete all command and ack files in the workspace.

In the freely editable parts of the filenames of devices, remote controls, commands and ack you must not enter the strings:

• "File of device ";

• "File of Remote control ";

• "To dev. " together with " command ";

• "To dev. " together with " command Cus. value ";

• "From dev. " together with " ACK ".

 Otherwise the application may malfunction.

For security reasons, the application can only interact with files it has created on Google Drive or those generated by the controlled devices.

Before authenticating with your Google account, you need to enable the Google API and generate authorization credentials by following the guide developers.google.com/i...ls/oauth2.

For this project I helped myself with the official Google Android examples and those contained in Android Studio. Therefore I thank the respective authors.

Notes:

1) the software does not implement all modern security systems for data protection, so it is better to avoid including sensitive data in the information exchanged between the devices and the Internet;

2) the software is provided "as is", without any kind of warranty; I don't assume any responsibility for the consequences deriving from the use of the information contained in this page.