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iLifesensor on the iPhone
By: Paul Higgins, ICW Developer Network
September 05, 2008
Abstract
In this article you will see how easy it is to use the ICW SDK and a mobile device, in this case the Apple iPhone, to access LifeSensor.
Florian Kärcher sent us in a demo application iLifesensor, which uses the ICW SDK and an Apple iPhone to record your weight, blood pressure and medication usage in a LifeSensor health record. Naturally we were curious as to how he had written his application. Today, you can read my interview with Florian and this will be followed up at a later date by a review of the application. David Harper from the IDN team decided he would check out the code and build his own running iLifesensor instance. You can read about that in a third article describing in more detail what went into building the application.
Inspiration
Oliver Emmler from the User Interface Design (UID) team here at ICW got the idea for this project originally by asking himself the question, "Can we use the iPhone, its Web-based Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Java-based ICW SDK to create something that users and developers alike will be inspired by? And how can the UID team do this as simply as possible"?
With internal developer resources internally fully allocated Oliver decided to hang up a notice at a local university to see if he could generate some interest. He duly got a hold of Florian Kärcher, a student at Heilbronn University, who took on the job of developing the web application. This work will form the subject of his thesis.
I got the chance to talk to Florian and we had the following discussion on the background to the project and what lies ahead.
Interview
IDN: Florian, can you tell us how and why you got involved?
FK: I saw an advert at the University of Applied Sciences Heilbronn. I was interested in using the iPhone SDK and the ICW SDK for my Thesis. The iPhone was interesting to work on. First I played around with the SDK and then focussed on the application. I did not know about the ICW SDK before I saw the notice.
IDN: Your completed application is a mashup of sorts, you use the Google Graphs API along with the ICW SDK.
FK: That's correct, the ICW SDK allowed me to connect to the data in LifeSensor and using the Google API I could add some nice looking graphs to the application to give a visualization of the trends from the data.
IDN: Did you make use of the Apple iPhone SDK for this project as well?
FK: No, I only use the CSS and HTML provided to create a web application that can be used on the iPhone.
IDN: Will it be a full iPhone application, meaning can you download it and use it directly from the iPhone?
FK: This application will not be available as a full application. It's a web application, the advantage here is that updates and new features can be implemented on the server and it allows for easier maintenance. The user does not have to update anything on the client.
IDN: If someone wants to play with the application code do they have to have a LifeSensor Account?
FK: No. They can use the DRecord to test the application against the demo system DRecord. After playing around and maybe modifying the application there can be tests against the real record, if they want to use it for real. They can also see the source code which is hosted by Google Code.
IDN: Can the application be used on other mobile phones or devices?
FK: Currently it is an iPhone web application, which means that it is a web application optimized for the iPhone but we have seen Blackberrys working with it as well. We have made the code open source and it could be extended for use by other mobile devices or browsers. At the moment it is only available in Germany as a demo version, but there is nothing to stop someone localising it for another country.
IDN: You say it is only available in Germany. So that means that a LifeSensor user in America, Austria, or Switzerland can't use it. So who can use it at the moment?
FK: In general it's only available for anyone who has a German LifeSensor account. You can access the demo for your iPhone from: ilifesensor.mobi
IDN: So what are your plans for the project?
FK: The next steps are to look at integrating the Emergency Data Set (EDS) and LifeSensor Fitness in October using the Java SDK. There will be a presentation at GMDS 2008 in Stuttgart on the 17.09.2008. [Note: You can find the conference agenda on www.gmds2008.de]
IDN: Thanks Florian!
Getting involved
Feel free to test this application out on an iPhone or iPod Touch and let Florian know what you think. Your ideas are welcome and you can post them in our forums under LifeSensor.
If you want to get involved in the project and participate in future development go to: code.google.com/p/lifesensor-mobil/
Anybody with a Google account can submit an issue on the project website.
