ProjectBeacon first cut demo

[madhurk]

We now have the first cut of our app working end to end. As a quick refresher - the main use case of the app is to be able to create "beacon" based recipes such that user can configure certain actions when they approach or leave a beacon region.

We have the basic flows in place with notifications functionality working. Here are the main components that we have worked on so far:

1. BLE service for scanning / monitoring beacons: The service is built from scratch using standard Bluetooth API's available in Android. We could have picked one of the enhanced BLE SDKs such as RadiusNetwork or Estimote but chose to implement from scratch so that we could learn concepts such as services, loopers, handlers, IPC.

2. All the required screens for creating recipe, selecting beacon, configuring actions and sending notifications. Implemented using standard Android concepts such as activities, fragments, intents, push notifications etc.

3. Used Parse SDK for login, syncing user data in the cloud.

Here is a quick demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWfxCbwYyJ4

@nesquena and @timothy1ee, @vibhorB take a look

[vibhorB]

Good work ProjectBeacon team. The app looks good in terms of implementation. Now you guys need to work on making the UI better, making the app more usable. Really great that you guys have worked on building the beacon service from scratch.

Spend more time in adding polish to UI and adding small features to make user experience better. These tasks are what will make your app stand out from the crowd and bring a lot of value. Keep working on a story also for the demo, a good story wins half the battle of presenting the app. Looking forward to your final product.