Enabling unknown sources on Phillips PUS7909 series Android smart TV

06 Jun 2015 | Android
I recently bought a TV, mainly to watch the upcoming Le Mans race, but also the occasional movie and such. To my surprise, though, the Play Store application only shows very few applications, and you cannot install own APK's on the TV and the Security Settings menu is hidden along with the Developer Settings menu.

So in order to get into those you need a little bit of terminal-fu and a Terminal application. The latter you can get from the Play Store, just grab "Terminal Emulator for Android", which should install without problems.

To get to the menu where you can enable Unknown Sources so your can install 3rd party apps write:


This will bring up the Security Settings menu, where you can enable Unknown Sources. This allowed me to install apps such as YouSee Film & TV and other apps, which are not available in the Play Store on this device.

To allow more applications being installed on the device, you can open the Developer Options and enable more applications from play store at the bottom. What it essentially does is to tell Play Store that the TV has a touch screen, which is what limits what is shown. To do so write the following in the terminal:

Many apps only work with touch screens, which is why this is disabled, because it makes it super cumbersome to navigate the application. Even with the air pointer thingie built into the remote, which is super hard to get to point properly. What I did though, was to plug in a USB mouse for those apps which are super hard to use.

iOS WebView insets

07 Apr 2015 | Xamarin.iOS
I have been battling some UI constraints on iOS and I have finally found a solution to how to solve this specific problem and just wanted to share.

My problem was that I had a UIWebView, which kept laying itself out underneath the NavigationBar in my controller. A quick fix would be to just set edges for the extended layout to none like so:



However, this will make you lose the nice effect of views scrolling behind the NavigationBar, for instance if the web page you are displaying scrolls.
Enter insets. As the name kind of indicates you add some spacing into your view. There is a property called AutomaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets. However, for some reason it does not do anything in my case, so I had to manually adjust the inset, which I did in ViewWillLayoutSubviews as in ViewDidLoad the TopLayoutGuide is not ready yet and will give you 0 for its Length. Basically this is what I had to do:



This tells both the UIWebView's internal ScrollView and the scroll bar that you want some space in the top equals to the height of the NavigationBar.

Changing from Map property to GetMapAsync() on MapFragment

30 Jan 2015 | Xamarin.Android Maps
Recently the Map property on the MapFragment was marked obsolete. Instead, we now have to use the GetMapAsync() method. However, that method expects a callback object. Hence, we need slightly more code to not have our code use obsolete stuff.

For the callback we need to implement the IOnMapReadyCallback interface, which simply has a method which gives us the GoogleMap instance.


As you can see I simply implemented that interface, and as all interfaces coming from the Java world which expects a Dispose() and Handle implementation we need to inherit from Java.Lang.Object. I also added an event to that class instead of passing a reference of my Fragment into that class.


Now you might be using the SetupIfNeeded() method which Xamarin also uses in their samples and is called in OnCreate() and OnResume() and where ever you feel like it. For that purpose I have adapted that to use the callback class.


Crazy start of 2015. M.Sc., MVP and new apartment++

27 Jan 2015 | Life
End of 2014 and this month have been a very busy time for me. I have been working very hard on finishing up my Masters Thesis, "Environmental Sensor Monitoring tablet application designed using cross-platform design patterns and frameworks", which in short terms concerns creating cross-platform applications using C#, Windows 8.1 SDK and the Xamarin SDK, using some design patterns and frameworks which help sharing code across the targeted platforms. The thesis was handed in the 19th of January and defended today 27th of January. I managed to get an A for the project, which I am super happy about.

Brüel & Kjær which I made the thesis in collaboration with and where I have been working part time the past 3.5 years also offered me a more permanent position last year, which I have accepted, which means I am starting full time from February, continuing creating cross-platform apps using Xamarin.

Alongside the thesis, I've been in the middle of buying an apartment, which is almost settled now. So the plan is that I am going to move 1st of March, which is going to be great. Right now I am living in a small dorm room, where I just have enough room for a desk, bed and some storage furniture. It is going to be great to get around 8 times the space of the dorm room.

Last but not least, I have been awarded a Xamarin Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award, which was announced a couple of days ago. I am really honored to get such an award and this is my first MVP award ever. Hopefully I will live up to the award and get a new one at the end of the year.

Looking forward to tackle this year and get the best out of it, get cracking at some code and provide answers to your questions on the community forums etc. I am planning on creating more tutorial videos, like I have done previously, which seem to be quite popular. If you have any topics you want covered related to Xamarin, do post a comment and I might just make a video on that.

Using MapFragment inside ScrollView

06 Nov 2014 | Xamarin.Android Maps
I have an app where I need to put a Map inside a ScrollView, doing so will make the ScrollView intercept all the touch events. So the solution is to call RequestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(true) whenever you need the Map to scroll around, pinching it etc. The problem is that MapFragment or its properties do not expose any touch events, so it makes it a bit harder to find out when it is touched.

I found a nice little code snippet, Lorensius Londa posted on his blog, for Java Android, which overlays the MapFragment with a FrameLayout and using the FrameLayout touch event. Using this exact technique help me achieve my goal as well. Here is the code I used.

So as you see in the code there is a TouchableWrapper which simply fires some Actions whenever it was touched or the touch was released. This is grabbed by the TouchableMapFragment which subsequently fires the equivalent events.
The Fragment is used as follows in a AXML layout.
Then you can use the events in your Activity like so.
Now you should be able to navigate your Map when it is nested in a ScrollView.