I just released an app on the Android market called the “Vocal Set Rest Workout Timer“.

A few screenshots:

A promo video I put together:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jytfhtQIA84

Here is the app’s description:
“The Vocal Set Rest Workout Timer allows you to easily manage your workout with an audio and/or visual cue as the timer counts down on the screen. With this app you can decide the number of workout sets with a length in seconds, and how long you want your rest periods between to be in seconds as well. I made this app so I would try to be more consistent with my weight lifting workouts. Normally I only did short workouts without taking a break, but I think this app will help me do more now. I hope you too can benefit from the effort I put into creating this. The audio is optional, so you can disable that if you prefer. Otherwise I think it is helpful, so you don’t have to keep watching your phone’s screen as you workout. Each screen includes a simple help text and of course my apps thus far don’t require any special access like Internet or GPS, so you can feel safe using it.”

From a development standpoint I did quite a few thing I had not gotten into before.

First off would be sound. I decided to go with the SoundPool object instead of the media player. The main benefit is that I can load a bunch of audio files into a single object that I can call later on to get the sounds I need.

Second I dealt with timing. I decided on an extended class of the CountDownTimer class. It seemed like the simplest timer to deal with and it worked perfectly for what I was trying to do. The public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) function just decremented a global time tracking variable, and I made functional decisions in the public void onFinish() function. When I needed to pause, I just canceled the active count down timer. When resuming all I needed to do was create a new object with the old saved time and functionality state variables.

Besides that most of the code was “old hat” stuff I had done before or at least done something similar. It would be nice if I could setup a template somehow to use for my new projects. Even just implementing the base code I need takes a while…