Learn Speaker and Microphone Control with Meow Shot!

codetricity · March 7, 2019, 8:59pm

Meow Shot! is a completed plug-in that shows use of the internal THETA speaker and microphone. It is available in the THETA Store and also on GitHub. The author Shiro also wrote the theta4j library I covered earlier.

The plug-in is written in Kotlin. I had some problems with Kotlin initially, but was able to get through his code on GitHub and make some modifications myself.

The concept is to get your cat’s attention with a cat sound.

I don’t have a cat and am not sure if it works with cats. However, I tried this with my daughter and it worked for one shot. It probably won’t work with people every time.

There’s also a solid example of how to build a web GUI for your plug-in.

Web GUI example using NanoHTTPD

To produce the web GUI, Shiro uses NanoHTTPD. This is a small web server for Android. It is also used by other plug-in developers.

github.com

shrhdk/meowshot/blob/master/app/src/main/java/be/shiro/meowshot/WebServer.kt

/*
 * Copyright (C) 2018 Hideki Shiro
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package be.shiro.meowshot

import android.content.Context
import fi.iki.elonen.NanoHTTPD

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Learning to Use the Media Class with the THETA

Shiro uses the standard Android Media class. It’s a good opportunity to see how it works on the THETA.

github.com

shrhdk/meowshot/blob/master/app/src/main/java/be/shiro/meowshot/SoundManager.kt

/*
 * Copyright (C) 2018 Hideki Shiro
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package be.shiro.meowshot

import android.content.Context
import android.media.*

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Modification

Community member Chuck Pressman modified Meow Shot! and created Chicken Shot!. According to Chuck, the plug-in is easy to modify and fun to work with. He indicated that it was a quick way to learn some of the basic techniques for plug-in development.

I encourage everyone to modify the plug-in and submit your own creation to the THETA Plug-in Store so we can all have fun. If you need help with the submission, let us know.

Summary

As the plug-in is fairly simple, I found it easier to go through the code compared to larger plug-ins.

The main problem for me is that the code is in Kotlin, which I don’t know. I’m still struggling with Java and although Kotlin is hot and in the news right now, I’m not taking it on quite yet.

Overall, this is a great plug-in to learn how to use the microphone, speaker and web interface.

As the plug-in is in the store, you can test it out easily. It’s fun and gratifying to hear the cat sounds and use the web interface.