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CPSC 110-08: Computing on Mobile Phones
Spring 2012
No Text While Driving Tutorial

CS Principles

This activity addresses the idea that computing is a creative activity and focuses on the following learning objectives:

1: The student can use computing tools and techniques to create artifacts.
3: The student can use computing tools and techniques for creative expression.
4: The student can use programming as a creative tool.

Preliminaries

This lesson assumes your phone has the ability to send and receive text messages. The phones for the CPSC-110 should all contain pre-paid SIM cards, which may or may not still have available minutes.

This tutorial is described in Chapter 4 of the App Inventor text.

This lesson introduces a number of new App Inventor components:

Texting: This component processes incoming and outgoing text messages.
TinyDB: This component allows us to store the automatic response in a persistent database.

Testing the SIM Card

Find your phone's phone number by going to Settings --> About Phone -->Status--> "My phone Number".
Try to text your Android phone (from your own personal phone) and try using your Android phone to text your personal phone.
To add money and/or re-activate the SIM card you can go to: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-refill and select the "Fill up now" button. Once you add funds, the phone should be activated almost immediately. A restart is advisable if the account was deactivated.
If your phone's SIM card is no longer active, try using Text Plus, an SMS over WiFI app. (See below.)

SMS Over WiFi

Text Plus is an free Android app that will let us write App Inventor texting apps without purchasing SIM cards for our phones. It sends text messages over a Wifi connection. Here's how to get texting working on your phones.

Turn on the phone's WiFi nextwork and login to Trinair:
- Go to settings --> wireless & networks --> check the WiFi box (to turn on WiFi) --> tap WiFi Settings --> tap TrinAir --> a pop-up should appear. scroll to the bottom of the pop-up
- Identity: cmpcntr\YOUR USERNAME example: cmpcntr\plakealm
- Password: YOUR TRINITY PASSWORD
Use the phone's built-in Market app to search for the Text Plus app and download the free version.
Open the application and create an account, which will provide you with a phone number. This number is your phone's SMS incoming and outgoing number.
Test the application by sending messages to and from your personal phone. You will need to maintain an internet connection for the program to work.
When sending out an SMS message, the phone will give you a choice "Complete action using" either text plus or regular messages. Select textplus and check the "Use by default for this action" tick box below it to make it the default option.

No Texting Tutorial

The No Text While Driving App relieves the user of having to respond to text messages received while driving (or bicycling, running, etc.). It allows the user to create an automatic reponse and then sends that message to the sender whenever a message is received.

Hands-On

With an active SIM card on your phones, follow along with the tutorial. By the end of class, you should have a version of this app working on your phones.