So I recently went from an HTC Hero to an HTC Evo. Now that I have a phone with an LED flash again, I can use it as a flash light! Unfortunately, many of the programs available on the market are for making a screen white. Not what I’d say is good use of the flash. But of course there is a reason for that; most android phones don’t have LEDs yet.

Trying to find out how to start wasn’t as simple as I’d like. It seems like you have to go through the trenches and most don’t want to make it easy. So forget all that stuff, this is what you do:

• Get the Android SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
• Download Java 6 SDK: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
• Get Eclipse IDE for Java: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Unzip both Android and Eclipse. Install Java 6. Then let Java update itself.

Fire up the Android SDK, fire up Eclipse.

Check out this site for how to get started:

• http://www.vogella.de/articles/Eclipse/article.html
• http://www.vogella.de/articles/Android/article.html

Those might not be as easy as I’d like, but it’s better than I’m prepared to offer myself (for now).

A word of caution, it may seem that part of the reason there isn’t such a direct way of explaining how to go about getting, installing, creating everything android is because it’s really not for just anyone. Not in the same way it was with html.

Some might have the assumption that you can just buy a book and get going. Most who have tried and are seasoned in different languages have said they’ve had problems when their backgrounds wasn’t in Java. As for me? I have been working with ActionScript for many years which is a comparable OOP. As a matter of fact, taking a quick look on the web showed that they go hand in had as far as languages go. Even so far as to be able to write in Java and have an interpreter compile flash files! Now that’s pretty bad ass.

So we’ll see where I end up. Having read the reviews on amazon about android books hasn’t been helpful. Most say the books weren’t good, but also that they didn’t have Java experience. Others who are Java geeks say they were good books, it’s just that they needed introductory Java first, THEN beginning android. Well, as has been with other languages/systems/problems, no better way than to jump in and see if I can indeed swim!

My goal: make a program that’ll just turn the light on and off. So far I’ve learned to add color, text, buttons and fields. Now where do I put the graphics?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 9:55 AM and is filed under Todo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.