2011-2012-Gesture App

Gesture App, Tool For Lazy People

by Jurgen Jans and Anke Reinschlüssel

The goal of our project was to use a smartphone as a kind of “remote control” for the computer. Because the Android systems is commonly used and it is possible to create one’s own app (and because we have Android phones) we decided to create an Android app to control the computer. Starting programs by clicking a button is the normal way that’s way we’re using gestures painted on the screen of the smartphone.

To be able to start or quit programs besides an app a program running on the computer is needed as well. So our project consists of two parts: on the one hand the GestureApp for Android phone and on the other hand a small server written in Java running on the computer. The server has to process the requests sent from the phone and also send a message back. The phone and the computer are connected by WiFi.

Our app has several functions. Because of the kind of connection an option to enter the correct IP address of the computer is necessary. A library to look up all the possible gestures is implemented as well. In addition to list all gestures with the connected program the library provides the possibility to change the gesture to start a program, to delete a gesture and to add a gesture. Adding a gesture is always possible but just with predefined keywords the server is able to process the request.

You might also like to know which programs are already running on your computer so that you don’t need to start them. This is what the function “launched apps” is for. You can also quit the already running programs by painting the corresponding gesture. So the same gesture is used for starting and quitting which is lowering the memory load for the user. To avoid accidently quitting a running program a confirmation screen is shown when the server recognizes that the program is already running.

If you painted a gesture to start a program and then you suddenly don’t want to start the program it is possible to cancel the current action by simply shaking the phone. This also works for the quit order.

http://youtu.be/d_4AEIZ3cig