Ably Asset Tracking Demo: Android Customer

Ably is the platform that powers synchronized digital experiences in realtime. Whether attending an event in a virtual venue, receiving realtime financial information, or monitoring live car performance data – consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. Ably provides a suite of APIs to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime for more than 250 million devices across 80 countries each month. Organizations like Bloomberg, HubSpot, Verizon, and Hopin depend on Ably’s platform to offload the growing complexity of business-critical realtime data synchronization at global scale. For more information, see the Ably documentation.

Overview

This demo presents a mock customer-facing app with functionality matching that expected for the typical use case for Ably's Asset Tracking solution, being the tracking of a delivery being made to that customer, where that customer is using an Android device. Such deliveries could be food, groceries or other packages ordered for home delivery.

This app is a member of our suite of Ably Asset Tracking Demos, developed by Ably's SDK Team to demonstrate best practice for adopting and deploying Asset Tracking.

Running the example

To build these apps from source you will need to specify credentials in Gradle properties.

The following secrets need to be injected into Gradle by storing them in gradle.properties file in the project root:

• MAPBOX_DOWNLOADS_TOKEN: On the Mapbox Access Tokens page, create a token with the DOWNLOADS:READ secret scope.
• GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY: Create an API key in Google Cloud, ensuring it has both Geolocation and Maps SDK for Android API.
• FIREBASE_REGION: Firebase region to which the backend is deployed, used to determine api host
• FIREBASE_PROJECT_NAME: Backend Firebase project name, used to determine api host

To do this, create a file in the project root (if it doesn't exist already) named local.properties , and add the following values:

MAPBOX_DOWNLOADS_TOKEN=create_token_with_downloads_read_secret_scope
GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=create_api_key_with_geolocation_maps_sdk
FIREBASE_REGION=create_firebase_action
FIREBASE_PROJECT_NAME=create_firebase_action

On the login screen on the app startup, you will be asked to login into an account created in the backend service. For more details, see Ably Asset Tracking Backend Demo. After the first login, the app will store encoded credentials for future usage. To remove them, use the "Clear storage" option in the system app settings.

Known Limitations

For the sake of simplicity, the demo app does not handle the following cases:

• log out not implemented - to use a different account clear app data using system settings