Rebuilding Droid Tower

Maxwell_Wang · July 28, 2019, 9:15am

TDLR: need a working updated project folder of Android Tower for android studio

Hello I recently have attempted to rebuild a android studio project for Tower. But because it is so old there are tons of errors being thrown and the gradle version doesnt work.
if I do get it to work will post!
thanks in advance!

wn0x · July 29, 2019, 7:37pm

Would love to see this done! I had the same problem trying to compile.

cookmangr · September 14, 2019, 5:23pm

Any news for the updated version??

Pedals2Paddles · October 8, 2019, 12:22pm

Nobody (or at least nobody known) is working on re-developing and maintaining the Tower app. TBH, I think it’s pretty unlikely that will ever happen. AeroHawk forked it about a year ago, made some fixes so it will work on newer versions of Android, and released it under their own name, “Mission Maker for ArduPilot”. However, that is no longer in the play store, so I presume they are no longer maintaining or supporting it either. The only one there is their DJI version.

So as far as Android based applications go, your choices seem to be QGC and Solex.

maciek252 · December 13, 2019, 10:58pm

I have a compiling version, notice the text in the black widget. Tell me please how to publish this.

victorpv · January 14, 2020, 10:40pm

Have you forked the repo? if not, you should fork and merge all your changes so doesn’t get lost. Would be great if you can publish the app in your fork.

maciek252 · January 14, 2020, 11:06pm

OK, thanks for the answer. My fork is here:

I have also managed to compile the dronekit, will also fork and publish this.

micronet_gigatech · January 15, 2020, 9:33am

Iam sorry sir, i have the problem on your project. I fork your project, and i build on my android studio and i have a problem. How to fix this error?

maciek252 · January 15, 2020, 9:38am

I’m sorry, it seems that I haven’t commited the last changes. Could you check now?

Taipan · January 20, 2020, 4:14am

@maciek252 - as I don’t have the tools or the skills to compile my own version of Tower, could you please provide me with the .APK that I could then install on my Samsung Galaxy S9 phone (Android ver 9)?

maciek252 · January 20, 2020, 12:55pm

OK, I’ll compile, check on my phones and post if everything is fine.

wn0x · January 20, 2020, 5:22pm

Thank you @maciek252, I still find Tower the easiest tool to use. Appreciate your effort.

Pedals2Paddles · January 20, 2020, 10:59pm

It would be fantastic to see Tower come back to life again.

maciek252 · January 31, 2020, 5:46pm

http://46.41.148.74/Android-dev-debug.apk

A version not signed and completely not fixed - lots of things to be updated. For example, the API for offline maps has changed. But at least it compiles

Taipan · January 31, 2020, 10:52pm

Thanks @maciek252 - I will install it and give it a try …

Can I assume that you are going to continue to work on Tower to address the “lots of things to be updated”?

BTW, what do you mean by “A version not signed”?

maciek252 · February 1, 2020, 10:31am

I will try to solve some issues, it’s interesting to learn how far the android apps have moved during this years… Right now I’ve partly fixed the offline map problem delivered by mapbox. I’ve made it working but not for satellite views - it complains about missing tiles, maybe the size of the tiles has changed? For sure the API has changed, no more need for “mapbox id”, only the token.

Also the version I’ve posted will not show maps because there’s no google API key. I’ll do it like it was for mapbox: the API key will need to be introduced into the configuration settings for every user. Or maybe I’ll try to use my key at least temporarily.

If an app is not signed, the phone will complain that it’s not safe, can’t be verified etc

Saijin_Naib · February 1, 2020, 1:10pm

I wonder if taking the map loading/caching from something like QGIS Mobile/Input/QField might be easier, and allow for more map services easily.

Is Tower QT-based?

maciek252 · February 1, 2020, 1:45pm

No, Tower is Android as it was for 2015/16 - some Kotlin already but no MVVM, no coroutines etc

https://qgis.org/en/site/

Create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial information on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD (Android coming soon)

Mapbox is fine when it comes to Android, I think. Interesting that originally Tower was maintaining the tile download on its own, but this is also supported by Mapbox and it has fall back to this option when the Tower’s tiles manager stopped working… (but for plans, not satellite photos).

Saijin_Naib · February 1, 2020, 2:03pm

These are the repositories I was referencing. I was curious if perhaps any of the rendering/caching code for the tiles would benefit your work at all.

QGIS Android Port:

Input (data collect for QGIS):

QField (data collect for QGIS):

kerimzhanov_a · April 26, 2020, 6:32pm

Hello everyone, maciek252 thanks for the application. I have a problem, when i try to connect to the SITL jmavsim, it shows error
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method ‘java.lang.String android.net.wifi.WifiInfo.getSSID()’ on a null object reference
at org.droidplanner.services.android.impl.utils.connection.WifiConnectionHandler$1.onReceive(WifiConnectionHandler.java:103)
Who know how to solve it?