Android Wear Projects: Create smart Android Apps for Wearables

Wearable can use the same layouts that we use in handheld Android device programming but with specific constraints for Wear applications. We should not do heavy processing actions similar to handheld Android devices in Wear applications and expect a good user experience.

An application designed for a round screen will not look great on square Wear devices. To resolve this, the Android Wear support library comes with the following two solutions:

We can provide different resources to allow Android to detect the shape of the Android Wear at runtime.

Lists let the user an item from a set of items. In the legacy Wear, 1.x API WearableListView helped programmers to build lists and custom lists. Wearable UI library now has WearableRecyclerView with curvedLayout support and has the best implementation experience in Wear devices.

We can add gestures and other magnificent functionalities:

Compared to in handheld Android devices, in Wear applications, confirmations should occupy the whole screen or more than what handheld devices show as a dialogue box. This ensures users can see these confirmations at one glance. The Wearable UI library helps in displaying confirmation timers and animated timers in Android Wear.

A DelayedConfirmationView is an confirmation view based on the timer:

<android.support.wearable.view.DelayedConfirmationView
android:id="@+id/delayed_confirm"
android:layout_width="40dp"
android:layout_height="40dp"
android:src="@drawable/cancel_circle"
app:circle_border_color="@color/lightblue"
app:circle_border_width="4dp"
app:circle_radius="16dp">
</android.support.wearable.view.DelayedConfirmationView>

In the new of Android Wear, the Material design library the following two interactive drawers:

Lets user switch between in the application. Developers can allow the drawer to be opened anywhere within the scrolling parent's content by setting the setShouldOnlyOpenWhenAtTop() method to false:

<android.support.wearable.view.drawer.WearableNavigationDrawer
android:id="@+id/top_drawer"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:background="@android:color/holo_red_light"
app:navigation_style="single_page"/>

The action drawer gives to easy and common actions in your application. By default, action drawer appears at the bottom of the screen and provides specific actions to users:

<android.support.wearable.view.drawer.WearableActionDrawer
android:id="@+id/bottom_drawer"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:background="@android:color/holo_blue_dark"
app:show_overflow_in_peek="true"/>

In addition to the power button, Android Wear supports another button called the multifunction button on the device. The Wearable library provides API for determining the multifunction buttons included by the manufacturer:

@Override
// Activity
publicboolean onKeyDown(int keyCode,KeyEventevent){
if(event.getRepeatCount()==0){
if(keyCode ==KeyEvent.KEYCODE_STEM_1){
// Do stuff
returntrue;
}elseif(keyCode ==KeyEvent.KEYCODE_STEM_2){
// Do stuff
returntrue;
}elseif(keyCode ==KeyEvent.KEYCODE_STEM_3){
// Do stuff
returntrue;
}
}
returnsuper.onKeyDown(keyCode,event);
}

Visit https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/ui/index.html for any sort of query that you might have on design guidelines for Wear device programming.

Visit https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html to download the latest version of Android Studio. Google highly recommends using Android Studio for all Android application development, since Android Studio has tight with and useful Android APIs:

After the Android Studio installation, it's now time to download the necessary SDK in the SDK Platforms tab in SDK Manager. Install one complete version of Android; for the scope of this book, we will install Android 7.1.1 API level 25:

After the successful installation of the SDK of Nougat 7.1.1 API level 25, under the SDK Tools tab, make sure you have the components, as shown in the following screenshot:

Google releases updates on IDE and SDK Tools frequently; keep your development environment up-to-date.

Visit the following link to check the Release Notes on SDK Tools: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/sdk-tools.html.

Updating your IDE from the stable channel is highly recommended. Updates for Android Studio are available on four different channels:

Canary channel: The Android Studio team works continuously to make Android Studio better. In this channel, every week there will be an update release, and it will include new functionality changes and improvements; you can check those changes in the release notes. But updates from this channel are not recommended for application production.

Dev Channel: On this channel, a happens after a complete round of internal testing from the Android Studio team.

Beta channel: On this channel, updates are based on stable Canary builds. Before publishing these builds to a stable channel, Google releases them in the beta channel to get developer feedback.

Stable Channel: Are the official stable releases of the Android Studio and will be available to download on Google's page http://developer.android.com/studio.

By default, Android Studio receives from a stable channel.

Click on the Start a new Android Studio project option in the Android Studio window. You will be prompted by another with project details.

The following screenshot shows the window that allows users to configure their project details, such as project name, Package name, and whether the project needs native C++ support:

You can name your project as you wish. After you have chosen your project name and your project local system location, you can press the Next button in the window, which brings up another window with a few queries, as shown in the following screenshot:

In this window, you can choose to write a standalone Wear application if you uncheck the Phone and Tablet option. In way, you will see only Wear application templates:

Now, Android Studio templates prompt only Android Wear activity templates with the following set of options:

The activity template helps you to access the default boilerplate codes, which are already templatized and can be used directly in projects:

To create the first project, we will choose Blank Wear Activity and click on the Next button in the window. Android Studio will prompt another window for creating the name of the activity and layout file. In this template, the two form factors of Android Wearable devices, which are mostly round and square shapes, are with the boilerplate code stub:

When your project is ready to be created, click on the Finish button. After clicking on Finish, Android Studio will take a few moments to create the project for us.

Way to go! You have now created a working boilerplate code for the Android Wear standalone application without the phone companion application. When successfully created, you will see the following files and codes to your project by default:

If your SDK is not updated with API level 25, you might see the Wear option in the Android Studio project creating prompts with Android Wear support library 1.x; you can update this in the Wear module Gradle file with the following dependency:

compile 'com.google.android.support:wearable:2.0.0'

Creating a Wear emulator

The process of a Wear emulator is very to creating a phone emulator.

In the AVD manager, click on the Create Virtual Device... button:

Choose the required form factor emulator according to your application needs. Now, let's create the Android Wear square emulator:

After selecting the right emulator for your Wear, you will get another prompt to choose the Wear operating system. Let's the API Level 25Nougat emulator, as in the following screenshot:

The last prompt asks for the emulator name and other orientation configurations based on your needs:

Way to go! Now, we have successfully created a square form emulator for the project. Let's run the project that we have in the emulator:

Google recommends developing Wear apps in the actual hardware device to have the best user experience. However, working on emulators has the benefit of creating different screen form factors to check the application's rendering.

Working with actual Wear device

1. Open the settings on the Wear device
2. Go to About device
3. Click on the build number seven times to enable developer mode
4. Now enable ADB debugging on the watch

You can now connect the Wear device directly to your machine with the USB cable. You can debug your applications over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with the following setups.

Debugging over Wi-Fi

Make sure your watch has the options enabled. Debugging over Wi-Fi is possible only when the Wear device and machine are connected to the same network.

• In the Wear device developer option, tap on Debug over Wi-Fi
• The watch will display its IP address (for example, 192.168.1.100). Keep a reference; we need this for the next step.
• Connect the debugger to the device
• Using the following command, we can attach the actual device to the ADB debugger:

adb connect 192.168.1.100

Enable Bluetooth debugging

We need to ensure debugging is in developer options, as follows:

• Enable Debug over Bluetooth
  • Install the companion app on the phone (download it from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.wearable.app&hl=en)
• Go to settings in the companion app
• Enable debugging over Bluetooth
• Connect the phone to the machine through the cable
• You can use the following commands to establish the connection:

adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
adb connect 127.0.0.1:4444

In your Android Wear, just allow ADB Debugging when it asks.

Now that we have a working setup of our development environment, let's understand the basic Android Wear-specific UI components.