I am in the process of a fairly major redo on the settings.  I am working on issues 100 through 103, and 32.  I just posted 2.8.0 beta on the downloads page.  It is ready for basic testing.  It still lacks some translations, the old settings still show up in the preferences (but no longer work), and I have a few other issues to work through but the basic functionality works.  I have moved many settings from the preferences (global) to instead be configurable per device.  I also changed several settings from radio selection to slider bars to get more tunable control to the user.  Since there are now so many settings, I changed the function of the back key to now save and exit instead of cancel and exit.  I added a new cancel button at the bottom of the settings.

Here is a preview of the device edit screens:

We just finished implementing the power connected as a device (issue 97) and the GPS auto-enable feature (issue 95).  We now have 5,755 active installs and 32,930 total downloads.  The chart below shows the language distribution based on the language selected in the device.  A2DP Volume only supports English, French, and German currently.

30,000 Downloads Exceeded

The main app version exceeded 30,000 downloads today.

The old version for Android 2.1 is now below 500 active installs.  I am hoping to remove that from the market this year.

Here is the current language breakdown for the main app version.

The app ratings are all improving as well.  We have not had a rating below 4 stars in a long time.  Also, we have not had a single crash report from the latest version.

Another Bluetooth issue fixed by A2DP Volume

I started getting people asking me if A2DP Volume would fix the issue they are having connecting to A2DP streaming devices.  It seems that Android and/or certain stereo head units don't really play well together.  When the hands free connects, it sometimes would disconnect A2DP.  I had this issue in my wife's car.  It has factory hands free Bluetooth but I added a GoGroove A2DP receiver.  That receiver also does hands free.  That GpGroove would connect first, then get kicked off by the factory hands free.  When that happened, the A2DP was also kicked off.  I fixed this by force connecting  the GoGroove when the factory hands free connected.

Another person had an LG Optimus V with a Sony car stereo.  It would connect hands free but not A2DP.  Every time he had to force the A2DP connection.  He fixed this using A2DP Volume by putting the MAC address of the Sony in A2DP Volume to force connect when the Sony connected.  Yes, this sounds like a circular reference but I made some changed in 2.5.1 that allowed this to work.  It now checks to see if an A2DP connection is already present before trying to force connect.  It tries every 7s for 21s.  When he did this it worked.  Now his head units connects both protocols fine.  Since that worked, I released 2.5.2 that allows you to select the same device you are editing for a force connect.  Shortly after this, another person fixed this same issue with his Droid 3 and Pioneer head unit the same way.

Hit 5,000 net installs

The main A2DP Volume app hit 5,000 net installs yesterday.  The total downloads is over 27,000.

Work is slowly progressing on the IM message plugin.  I have it working to the point of being able to login in to Google Talk and send and receive messages.  Much work to do though.

http://code.google.com/p/a2dp-volume-chat/

Adding IM reader support

I started a new project to create a plug-in for A2DP Volume to support reading chat/IM messages when a device is connected.  This spawned from issue 76 but also related to issue 79.  You can see the new project here: http://code.google.com/p/a2dp-volume-chat/

I chose to make this a plug-in rather than add all this overhead to the A2DP Volume application.  I will document the interface so others could also use it to integrate other message sources into A2DP Volume.  Those that want these features can simply install and configure the plug-in.  This helps reduce bloat and scope creep on A2DP Volume.  If anyone is interested in participating on this new project let me know.  The project name is "A2DP Volume Chat".

A2DP Volume Chat uses XMPP implemented via a modified version of Smack.  Unfortunately Android did not implement all of Java Beans so the normal Smack libraries don't work.  Luckily there is a modification to this here that does work with Android.  So far I created a basic app that will allow you to connect to Google Talk and see your list of friends.  You can also send and receive messages.  Much work to do.  I will be creating a database in A2DP Volume Chat that will allow the user to configure many different IM services.  For each service it will have a roster (held in another table).  The user will be able to configure who on the roster would be enabled for reading chat messages and sending to A2DP Volume to read out when connected.  It will act just like SMS does for A2DP Volume today.

25,000 Downloads

Last night A2DP Volume finally exceeded 25,000 downloads!