Reef Angel Forum

UPDATE: 6/30/14 - This app will no longer be supported. It will be removed from the App Store on 7/14/14. All users are urged to switch over to the OFFICIAL iOS Reef Angel App.

Link to Official App:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reef-an ... ?ls=1&mt=8

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This has been LONG overdue.

First off, I must say my apologies for the delay. Most of you will chime in, "it's ok" or "no worries" but I still feel I need to say it. I had to learn Objective-C and iOS programming to accomplish this task. It was different and things are still a work in progress.

Now, with that being said, on to the "good stuff". This new app is built for iOS 7 and later. It will not work on iOS 6 devices, so for those devices you should use the existing ReefAngel app created by John.

The app is currently designed to work for iPhone devices in portrait mode but will run on iPad devices in expanded compatibility mode.

Current Features:

• Displays current status from controller (does not work with the Portal).
• App configured from the Settings app in iOS. The hostname or IP of your controller is entered here and is needed for the app to work.

New Features:

• Displays the main relay
• Toggle the relay status for each port
• Added Feeding Mode, Water Change Mode, and Exit Mode buttons at the bottom of the screen
• Fixed up the display issue/artifacts with the app icon
• Changed the black/carbon background to white

The app will be continuing to evolve with the UI. There is a specific look that I want it to have and I have not achieved it yet. The more I learn, the more it will evolve to what I want. The end result will be a nice flow for the app.

Current iTunes Store Status: v1.1.0 Released
As of: 2/21/2013

For those of you who are interested, I have posted the source code for this project on my github account. The project is called iosStatus.

Download here:
Or use the link in my signature.....Enjoy!

Awesome!!!

Curt, if you're ever in the New York area, I owe you a beer! Great job. This is a HUGE milestone.

I will be attempting to upgrade my wife's computer to Maverick's soon so may have a platform for the latest XCode.

Will you be posting the source to your github repo? Could you include the link in the first post. Hopefully you will not have to go it alone moving forward. Thanks again for the effort you've been in to get us this far!!!

lnevo wrote:Curt, if you're ever in the New York area, I owe you a beer! Great job. This is a HUGE milestone.

I will be attempting to upgrade my wife's computer to Maverick's soon so may have a platform for the latest XCode.

Will you be posting the source to your github repo? Could you include the link in the first post. Hopefully you will not have to go it alone moving forward. Thanks again for the effort you've been in to get us this far!!!

I upgraded my mbp w retina to Maverick's last night. It took several hours to download and install plus several more hours for the additional software updates.

I haven't posted my source in my github account yet. I just have it on my own private git server currently. I wanted to get things situated first before I proceeded to making it public on github. I also have to update the copyright notice on it to switch things around and place it under either CC license (just like my android app) or the MIT license like the rest of the libraries. (I'll probably use the CC license). I will keep you posted and add the link to github in the OP when it's ready.

Awesome news. Any idea how long before it's up on iTunes? Days, weeks, months?

jjdezek wrote:Awesome news. Any idea how long before it's up on iTunes? Days, weeks, months?

No definite idea. From what all I've read while searching online, it usually takes up to 7 days for Apple to approve the app.

Ok cool. That's a pretty reasonable time frame. Thanks for all the hard work.

cant wait to try, i just receive my 5s. thanks for the update, great job!

Curt this is great news. Looking forward to it. Thank you!

Me too. I can't wait to test it out finally. Thank You.

Excellent news ... count me as another very appreciative user.
Thank you.

Is this app different from the ReefAngel-hd app in the apple aapstore?

Pny wrote:Is this app different from the ReefAngel-hd app in the apple aapstore?

yes it is different. that app will only work on ios 6 or lower. this new app is ios 7 or newer.


Sent from my iPad mini

Can't wait.

WOW!!!!

Nice Job Curt

Can't wait

When it does go through will it be under reef angel in the App Store?

jjdezek wrote:When it does go through will it be under reef angel in the App Store?

it will be under "reef angel status". i will also have a direct link on this topic and in my signature.


Sent from my iPad mini

Awesome work! You're doing this community a huuuuge service!

And well done for learning Objective C too!

Just to give everybody a heads up on the progress....

They began reviewing the app last Wednesday. They requested more information from me (wanted a video demonstrating how to use the app). They also had an issue with connecting to my test server. Thus requiring me to resubmit information, create and upload a video, and such. I got all that completed and now am still awaiting them to review the app again. So we shall see how long it takes them to get to it and approve it.

Now, with all that being said, I've made more progress on the app. I've added in the Main (1st) Relay box. The status can be updated and the toggle switches reflect the state of the relays (ON, OFF, Overridden). The same concept will apply here as with the previous app and my android app. The switch will show the state of the relay and assume it's in AUTO mode meaning that the relay status is under control of the programming logic. If you override the port (manually turn it on/off), there will be a blue exclamation icon (triangle with exclamation point in it) indicating that the port has been overridden and is not operating according to the programming logic. If you click on that icon, it will reset the port back to its programming schedule. The switch state will be the GREEN for ON and blank with a RED outline for OFF. I have included a screenshot of what it would look like. There still has to be further testing done to get things correct, so I will keep you posted. Also, this is NOT the version that will be in the first release. This will be a second release once the app is approved. Just thought I'd share the progress with everybody and forewarn you that the app will most likely continue to change with each release.

My ultimate goal is to get it to look similar to the Android app (but not the same). There will be some Apple and Android differences but I'm hoping that things will be similar to make things easy to go from one OS to another with a minimal learning curve. The iOS app is definitely behind right now but I'm hoping to get it caught up fairly quick.

Awesome... it should go faster now that you've had the initial review. Can't wait to see it. How much work will it be to add addtional relay modules now that the initial code is written? The last version required quite a bit of additional code which was ridiculous. Luckily it was a lot of copy/paste but something that easily should have been handled by arrays and what not.

Cool!!!

lnevo wrote:Awesome... it should go faster now that you've had the initial review. Can't wait to see it. How much work will it be to add addtional relay modules now that the initial code is written? The last version required quite a bit of additional code which was ridiculous. Luckily it was a lot of copy/paste but something that easily should have been handled by arrays and what not.

It should but they never officially reviewed the app yet. They started to but stopped because they didn't have a video demonstrating the app in use and they also screwed up the host. I gave them a test host to use and they added an extra space to the host string and it screwed up the testing for them. They rejected the app because of that (which was their error that I didn't handle properly inside my code). So now I must wait for them to get to my app again. When it's finally released, the version will be the one in the initial post.

As for the additional relays, I'm not sure. I would like to think that it would be easy to add them but I don't know how to handle it yet. I'm still looking into finding ways to create reusable views. All examples that I find is to manually create each screen and not a lot of reused/repeated code. In android it's appears easier to reuse the code (which is what I am doing). I'm using a lot of code from my android project to keep this modular as well, however initially the relay is not modular and is all hand coded. I wanted to get an understanding first before I made things any harder.

This is frustrating, waiting for them to review the app. Can you not release a "beta" version that we can use until they finish their review? Once it is "approved", we could then download the "authorized" version.

App store doesn't work that way unfortunately...

It would be nice if I could but I cannot....like lnevo said.

Can you sideload an apple product like you can an android?

johniii wrote:Can you sideload an apple product like you can an android?

If I have your device listed as a developer device linked to my account, you could load the apps that I built onto your device. I'm limited to 100 devices linked to my account.
Or I think you can sideload the apps if your device is jailbroken but I do not know for certain about this.

And then there's this note from Apple in their developer portal...

Apple Developer Portal wrote:Pre-Release Software Reminder
You may only share Apple pre-release software with employees, contractors, and members of your organization who are registered as Apple developers and have a demonstrable need to know or use Apple software to develop and test applications on your behalf.

Unauthorized distribution of Apple confidential information (including pre-release software) is prohibited and may result in the termination of your Apple Developer Program. It may also subject you to civil and criminal liability.

Was just curious. I am familiar w I the android but not ios

johniii wrote:Was just curious. I am familiar w I the android but not ios

Yeah, same here. The iOS stuff is all new to me in the last month or 2...