The first thing I did was to determine what my app will do. I decided to continue with my final project so I need my app to connect via bluetooth with  the board installed in my birdcatcher .

 

The will hav two levels. The first level is the main screen. The second level has two different option. One to Manage different bird songs in order to attract different bird species. To do so it is necessary to program the channel where the songs are programmed and how many minutes between the sound reproduction.

 

The other variable to get from the birdcatcher are the photographs taken. It is needed to download the photos from the SD Card on board the bird catcher and delete downloaded images.

 

So I defined this schematic of the app operation:

 

To program my app I decided to use MIT's app inventor. It is very easy to use environment. It consist mainly in two mayor views.

 

The first  is the design view. In this view you can design the app's aspect and how the person will interact with the phone. There you can set up buttons, text inputs, listpickers, layout, sensors, etc.

 

The other view is the blocks view where you code your app. In app inventor coding is very easy since by clicking on the objects previously designed you get the coding options you have. This options are inside a puzzle piece that only fits in a proper manner with other instructions. Like building a puzzle. You can download the app apk fiile by clicking HERE

 

To play the bird songs I recorded them from the Cornell University birds site (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/) probably the best in the world.

 

I designed and mill a board with transistors to simulate the button clicking with a signal from my board

 

Unfortunately I made a mistake while making my new satshakit  board.

I used paste to solder it and put it into the oven but the oven was heating in that moment and one of the heating elements was right below my board and it burned.

 

What I then did was to simulate the app and C program in my Mega 256 Arduino board using the pin 13 led as indicator. It worked fine  as you can see in the video. You can download the arduino program by clicking HERE