A must have app for arduino and android lovers!!

Its often soporific and expensive idea to use each sensor having specific use onto your project or vehicle. Now-a-days, most of our android phones are loaded with the sensors that are often the requirements of project like accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, proximity , GPS, wifi, bluetooth module, RTC (real time clock) whose data are pretty much accurate and can be easily accessed with the below mentioned apps.

The apps on Play store have actually come up with great idea of providing all the data from sensors within your smartphone and  wirelessly transmit them over different ways like wifi, bluetooth, or infra-red, thus, making our life easier with eliminating rooting the phone or making our own app which requires proficiency. Moreover, some developers also have released apps that can directly control your arduino’s most of the GPIO pins and can load it with code remotely. You can go through work / projects of Hazim Bitar from TechBitar.com. He has made series of such apps and they are actually well organised and bug free. Have a look over :

1. SensoDuino

An app from Hazim Bitar :Think of SensoDuino as a dozen or more free virtual shields for your Arduino each supporting a different sensor and function. All you need is your Android phone, Arduino, and a $10 HC-05 Bluetooth module. SensoDuino captures data from sensors built into your Android mobile device such as GPS, audio, gyro, date/time then transmits this data over an HC-05 Bluetooth module to Arduino or any device equipped with Bluetooth capabilities be it Windows PC, Mac, or microcontroller.

SensoDuino also saves the captured sensor data to a comma-delimited text file for graphing and analysis. You can control the frequency of sensor data acquisition, transmission, and logging (subject to the specifications of the sensor vendor.)

SensoDuino also features an Android sensor scanner that will list hardware and software sensors supported by your Android device as well as key sensor specifications such as max power consumption, resolution, vendor, etc.

2. ArduDroid

Another app from Hazim Bitar. ArduDroid is a simple tool to help you control your Arduino Uno (or clone) from your Android phone via the HC-05 Bluetooth serial model. NOTE: Other Bluetooth modules may or may not work. It’s both an Android app and an Arduino program which you can download from the developer’s website. ArduDroid performs the following functions:

1) Control Arduino’s digital and PWM pins.
2) Send text commands to Arduino Uno.
3) Receive/Send data from Arduino Uno over Bluetooth serial using the ever popular HC05 Bluetooth over serial module. It may or may not work with other Bluetooth modules.

For complete documentation and related downloads:
http://www.techbitar.com/ardudroid-simple-bluetooth-control-for-arduino-and-android.html

3. AMR Voice app : BT Voice Control for Arduino

Android Meets Robots : Voice Recognition

Now you don’t need to worry about using Rpi or similar platforms to enable voice recognition onto your project. You might have gone through use of Pocketspinx, or Julius STT or wit.ai STT. However their installation over processor are tedious and also requires certain type of training their acoustic models and language models. wit.ai however doesn’t need such training though but setting it up is really tedious when it comes for beginner. I suggest, simply pick your smartphone that are already powered with such tools. The AMR voice app uses the google voice recognition STT API on your smartphone and seamlessly delivers the result over Bluetooth module.

Uses android mobiles internal voice recognition to pass voice commands to your robot
Pairs with Bluetooth Serial Modules and sends in the recognized voice as a string
for example if you say Hello the android phone will return a sting *Hello# to your Bluetooth module *and # indicate the start and stop bits
Can Be used with any micro controller which can handle strings

4. ArduinoDroid – android IDE for arduino

You might have come across a situation where you were not left with your laptop battery, or computer failure, or urgent need to update the code. But one thing always remains common to these situation, your smartphone is always present with you 😛 .Enough said that today’s generation don’t leave their smartphone ideal owing to use of social media. Then, being a hobbyist why can’t I carry my favorite microcontroller’s IDE on my android? I can update my code anytime and upload to arduino later to test the same. Play store has featured this app since long time and actually server the purpose with mere presence of OTG cable along with you.

Features:
* open/edit arduino sketches
* example sketches and libraries included
* customizable code syntax highlighting *
* compile sketches (no root required)
* upload sketches (Arduino Uno/Uno_r3, Duemilanove, Nano, Mega 2560, Leonardo, Micro/Pro Micro, Pro, Pro Mini boards are supported, android devices with USB-host support required)
* works offline (no internet connection required)
* code complete *
* real-time diagnostics (errors and warnings) and fixes *
* file navigator *
* tiny built-in software keyboard *

App blog:
http://arduinodroid.blogspot.com

5. Arduino Bluetooth control

Arduino Bluetooth Control is an application that allows you to control your arduino board (and similar boards) via Bluetooth, and so to create awesome and fully customized projects, with the new features available within the app.
The settings section allows you to adapt the application to your needs, through a very simple and intuitive interface.
Once launched and connected to your module, the application handles sms receiving to control your board from wherever you are.Everything you need to do is just to keep a connected phone near your board via the application, and send an sms to it that starts with the word Arduino and followed by the data you need to send. For example -Arduino 1- means that -1- will be sent to your board, – Arduino hello- would send -hello- and so on.The application also smartly remembers your bluetooth module and will always try to connect automatically to the latest one you have used, so you won’t have to select it every time you use it .

6. Arduino Joystick BT control

It is always expensive to buy yourself a controller like joystick to control your prototypes. Moreover, a few arduino compatible joysticks are available in market and the ones available in plenty needs serial hack to fetch their data. Of coarse, developers have also present solution to this problem with this app, that allows joystick interface over your ever ready and never left alone ;D smartphone. It connects to HC-05 or HC-06 easily and starts streaming data at once in long string. The string received with Bluetooth module then can be easily parsed to retrieve required data.

I will keep on updating this list as I find and use other apps into my project.