I spent a lot of time this week working on our app. First, I setup my Android phone to have the Expo app. It could run an Expo Go app fine. However, when I created a development build (image below) and downloaded it on my phone, it always crashed upon opening.
To debug the app, I used two tools. The link to the build contains information about the build, so it can tell you if an error was encountered with the package.json, dependencies, app config, expo doctor, and gradlew, and more. While debugging, I ran into issues in all of these areas, but the logs provided allowed me to fix the errors. However, sometimes there were no errors in any of these, but the app still crashed. To fix this, I downloaded Developer Tools on the phone (which I believe are now integrated into Android phones, but since the phone is so old, it was a separate app) and turned on Debug mode for my phone. Then, when the phone is plugged into my laptop, I was able to see a log of all errors coming from the phone. I saw that the same vague error was encountered every time I tried to open the app. After doing research online, and having no luck with any of the quick fixes suggested by other people encountering the same error, I decided to uninstall all the packages I had installed, and then reinstall the required ones. I did this in case 1) I was using incompatible versions of packages together or 2) one of the packages was causing a problem, and I would be able to isolate it. After reinstalling the necessary ones (not related to BLE), the app finally worked on my phone! Image shown below. This process took too long, but I have never made an app before, so it was cool. Now, I have already written the code for BLE, and I know which packages to install. I have not yet actually implemented it, but that is my next step. I anticipate running into more problems, but at least I know how to deal with them now. I also plan on polishing the app design. It is currently a prototype of the real design.
In addition to the app, I made sure my software was up-to-date with Jada and Brooke’s work.
My progress is on schedule. I wanted to have the app complete before the Interim Demo, and it is at least partially complete already. Tomorrow I will start integrating BLE functions again.
In the next week, I should have the app completely finished and communicating with the mat. This will require adding BLE connectivity to the mat too, which I have been working on but have not completed yet. While I am adding this connectivity, I will also add connectivity to the lock, since Jada has been getting BLE to work on the lock.