myBrickset Android App

sid3windr

Which flags are being used on the Brickset site when you check "Built" or "Gift" in the app? Is it one of the colours available on https://brickset.com/profile/flagpreferences ?

RikTheVeggie

I haven't enabled integration with custom fields, tags, colours etc (actually I don't even think there's an API for this yet).  This means "built" and "gift" are stored internally on the device and are not backed up to or synced with brickset.com :(  I do mean to resolve this one day, but life keeps getting in the way.

sid3windr

Ahh, gotcha. I was curious if it was somehow stored at Brickset. Later I heard about the colour tags, and that you could "reuse" one as "minifigs missing" (in the Brickset FAQ).

So then I was wondering, maybe other tags were being used to store this.... would be cool! Although if API calls are needed first then someone has some work to do before you do... ;-)

Also very good to know in case I wipe and reflash my device (was planning to at some point). Can the data be backed up somehow?

RikTheVeggie

There's no mechanism within the app to backup and restore data, tho' I should be able to write something.  I'll try to find some time at the w/e to investigate this, tho' if one of the following options work please LMK and I won't rush it.

Otherwise, if you're familiar with the Android SDK (unlikely I know!) you can use the backup command to backup the app + data, or just pull a copy of the db (and obviously you can restore data this way too).  

What may be a better option is to take a look at Helium (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.backup&hl=en) and you can do other apps on your device at the same time.

sid3windr

I guess you're talking about 'adb backup' - I don't have much experience with it. I'll give Helium a go, thanks!

MaffyD

Helium is good - I use that when swapping phones.

nuttamastabuilda

Hi, I finally got a chance to load your app.  It's really cool so far, but I have one feature request: A discount calculator function. 

I imagine I'll be using your app most when I'm at a store shopping and need to look up RRP.  Is there a way that you can add a "calculate" button on the set description page?  That way, we can see the RRP, click a calculate discount button, input sales price, and calculate the discount without leaving the app?  It would be greater if you can write the set names and discounts to a temporary in-app log.  That would allow a user to calculate the discounts on a bunch of sets and then decide which ones they want to actually buy.

Thank you!

RikTheVeggie

I'll add a "calculate" button to my feature request list, but honestly I don't see it happening unless a lot of people chime in that this is something they'd like to see.

I assume you're trying to determine what % of discount a set has?  All phones include a calculator, but I also like to encourage everyone to do percentages in their head!  It's quite easy to figure out rough percentages - 10% is the price without the last digit (10% of $10 if $1, 20% is twice that or 5% is half) with a little bit of practice anyone can get a "good enough" answer much faster in their head than typing something in.

deusxanime

Have to agree with RikTV here. Don't like to see apps bloated with every feature under the sun that users ask for, especially if they aren't that useful/used by others and can easily be done in another app already on every phone, the calculator. It is just more things to break and distract from making sure the core app is stable.

nuttamastabuilda

RikTheVeggie said:

I'll add a "calculate" button to my feature request list, but honestly I don't see it happening unless a lot of people chime in that this is something they'd like to see.

I assume you're trying to determine what % of discount a set has?  All phones include a calculator, but I also like to encourage everyone to do percentages in their head!  It's quite easy to figure out rough percentages - 10% is the price without the last digit (10% of $10 if $1, 20% is twice that or 5% is half) with a little bit of practice anyone can get a "good enough" answer much faster in their head than typing something in.

Correct.  Just trying to compute the discount off RRP.

I agree that everyone should do it in their head, but in reality, we all lean on calculators these days.  :)  That said, seeing a set for $100 when the pre-sales tag said $128 and the RRP says $160, means you say $60 off great!.  But if I want to figure out the discount, I take 160/10 = 16.  16 + 16 = 32. Oh, "60" is close to 32 x 2 = 64, so that's not quite 40%.  Turns out that sales price is a 20% discount off a 20% discount.  Allowing a user to just tap a button, input $100 and have the app compute 1 - ( salesprice / RRP ) and display 37.5% would be very convenient (especially during the holidays).

Thanks in advance for considering this request!  The app is extremely useful with or without the discount calculator.


@deusxanime
This request isn't unrelated or a bloatware feature request.  RRP lookup is probably very high on the use cases for this app as it is way faster than using a browser to access Brickset or [email protected]  This request enhances the usefulness and convenience of this app as the main time people do RRP lookups is when they are standing in a shopping aisle thinking if it's worth buying something.  Determining discounts is what most people will try to do after seeing the RRP.  So the core of this request is to add a button, temporary field and a math formula, "1 - (salesprice/RRP)."  Not build a full-fledged calculator or invoke a call to the installed calculator and take the user out of the app.  We can do that manually already.  :)

VorpalRyu

Considering that the Brickset site & your app both can't display prices for all currencies, it really limits the usefulness of a function like this, personally I'd rather not see the app get bogged down with stuff like this.

sid3windr

I use this app every time I'm in a (toy) store. I've never thought of needing this functionality and don't see myself using it if it was.. Echoing the above here, too.

MaffyD

I just memorise all the prices. Of the sets I want, anyway - not every set! :-)

sid3windr

Well if there's anything price related I'd want to ask it's that the app should be able to display prices for Belgium if Brickset has them recorded (as opposed to the "EUR" price that IS reported, which is Germany - the cheapest EUR country out there). But I'm sure that's not currently in the API.

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr
sorry for being quiet lately, not had much free time.  Are you still looking for import/export functionality?  If so, I have a prototype version that seems to be working and I can try to do some more testing & hardening at the w/e so I can get it out.

Do you see Belgium prices on any set listings at brickset.com?  (I don't but it may depend upon profile settings?)  The API doesn't support these yet, but if Brickset has the data then I'm sure Huw would be up to making it available.

sid3windr

Belgian pricing is available under the Pricing tab for recent sets, yup. There would have to be some way to differentiate whether the price shown is coming from there, or from the global "euro" price (which is german and a lot cheaper) though...

Re import/export, yeah, I still need to reflash my phone, haven't dared yet ;) So that would be great!

RikTheVeggie

Question for you all - as you know, myBrickset includes thumbnail images of every set where such an image exists on brickset.com.  And it'll download a high-res image on-demand when browsing sets whilst online.  This allows myBrickset to be used full offline, and will work fine and show images even if it never ever sees an internet connection.

These images have grown over time and now account for about 250MB of data (luckily this is a one-time download).  Are they still useful to people?  I like to think of space as cheap but appreciate not everyone has a large internal drive or can add an SD card to their device.

If the images are removed, the app will shrink to < 5MB but thumbnails will not show until they've been seen and cached (the last 30MB are cached IIRC, which is approx 2000 images) but this can lead to a negative user experience when browsing for sets offline when images haven't been cached.  However it's over 5 years since I first wrote the app and free Wi-Fi is now available in most shopping malls, removing some of the need for a full offline experience.  

Obviously only the images would be removed, the rest of myBrickset's offline functionality would remain unchanged.

If people like the images, I can maybe try to find a way to reduce them.  There's no easy way to only "recent" images in the app, but I'm sure I could write something to do this (hmm, have I just talked myself into more work again?!).

deusxanime

Personally, I think cell phones with decent, high, or even unlimited data plans are pretty ubiquitous and it wouldn't be a big deal to just download images on demand at this point. I could see why you wrote it that way 5 years ago, but I don't know anyone without data on their phone anymore. It would also make initial install of the app less painful as you wouldn't have to take the 250 MB hit all at once, especially if you are out and about with no WiFi. 

Even so, I don't think it would be a big problem to deal with no images in the unlikely situation there is absolutely no way to get cellular OR WiFi data. Usually I'm just looking up MSRP or adding something to my owned or wanted lists, none of which really require seeing a picture.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Recce

Is the 30MB cache same as the cache that can be set under settings? It says for storing large images, so what happens if I view an image that exceeds this size limit?

For me I'd still prefer an all encompassing app with complete data instead of a "pull data as and when needed" approach regardless of whether there's free wifi around me. 

Cyc

Great app, but I would like to get the view of "wanted minifigures", not only the "wanted collectable minifigures" view.
On the brickset website this is available under the link https://brickset.com/minifigs/mycollection-wanted

It seems most websites and apps only support views of "collectable" minifigures, I get the distinction, but all minifigures can be collected right :)

Hope this is as easy as an extra menu item with an underlying sql statement.

(sorry if this was asked before and for valid/obvious reasons turned down)

As for the image data: I don't think you should put effort in changing it, if no one "complained" about it. Nowadays both 250MB permanent storage or always downloading on demand shouldn't be an issue for the target audience. (people with enough money to buy lots of Lego) 

chrisalddin

i think a way to turn it on and off is a good idea.
i know of my fire table, that i have is almost out of space. and the fire table dont use the memory card right. i have over 27gb free on the card and yet the table tell me over and over again i am low on space.

RikTheVeggie

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone.  It constantly surprises me how many of you still use myBrickset now that Brickset.com has improved it's mobile experience, wifi is more ubiquitous and data plans are cheaper!

Unfortunately I can't make the downloading of images an option without a lot of work and also hosting (and paying for the hosting of) images myself (if Google host the data they automatically send it as part of the app installation / update - I don't know a way to stop this from happening).  Another option would be to make two apps - one with and one without images, but I don't want to go down that route.  Shipping without images and then adding an option to download them all from Brickset would be a poor user experience (they have to do something and then wait for the downloads to finish) and may cause a lot of load and expense on Brickset's cloudflare account!

@Recce I'll have to check about the cache, but if I remove images then I could make a separate cache setting for thumbnails.  And it'll still be possible to only download large images on wifi rather than data.

@Cyc I would like to include "regular" minifigs in the app but it's not possible due to licencing issues over legacy data and especially images (Brickset is allowed to use the data but is not allowed to share it).  Everyone I have approached about using their data in the app either flat-out refuses or wants payment (which I cannot afford as myBrickset does not generate income). 

sid3windr

I'm fine with images the way it is now, I don't always have 4G (because my phone sucks, a bit, sometimes) or wifi, but I do always like my images... ;-)

RikTheVeggie

The latest release is now out in the Play Store!  It's a gradual release (currently only deployed to 20% of the user base) so it may be a little while before it becomes available to you.
It includes Import/Export functionality as requested by @sid3windr (he's already got a beta version) but not the support for additional currencies (as El Hefe needs to do non-trivial things with the api to make them work).

Other than that it's mostly a minor point release - improved translations (especially Italian), improved performance (UI should be more responsive whilst large tasks are running), all the latest images, and minor tweaks & bugfixes.

Please LMK if you experience any issues but I expect everyone should be able to upgrade smoothly.

sid3windr

Thanks for the excellent support!

Something that I've noticed that would be a useful shortcut is to have a link to Brickwatch.net on the sets view (where Brickset/Bricklink/Brickowl are). I switched between myBrickset and Chrome quite a bit earlier today in the store.

You can simply link http://brickwat.ch/<setnumber&gt; and it should work.

That site isn't useful to the entire world though (seems it covers Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Germany and UK right now) so I'm not sure if it's an ideal addition...

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr (and anyone else interested) - re: brickwatch, have a look at http://otissoft.co.uk/mybrickset/bin/myBrickset-91-2.5.14.apk [4.7MB] and tell me what you think.  It's literally just been shoe-horned in, I haven't done more than a very quick test or paid any attention to ensuring the layout is ok yet tho'.  Gives you something to play with though, and it's very quick to pull out if needed (adding it was pretty quick too, hence my fast response).

sid3windr

After my last posts I didn't dare make larger complicated requests - this one looked fairly simple to me too ;-)

After downloading the APK I now get "Download failed because you may  not have purchased this app". Got this last time when I installed it from APK, but that was on a device where it wasn't installed before...

Trying to fix that meant I had to uninstall the app, which made me lose my "built" "gift" etc. Luckily I exported last week! ;)

Unfortunately, I'm still stuck there - can't start the new APK.

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr huh, that's weird, it's a release build and should install directly on top of any existing version.  Ah, it's probably looking for the latest expansion files which haven't been fully rolled out yet.  I'll increase rollout of 2.5.13 to 100%, hopefully that'll fix it.  If not I'll do a google-free build when I get home from work (it doesn't use expansion files so downloads images on the fly).

sid3windr

Yep, your import/export test build installed right over the one from the Play store - this one didn't. I rolled back for now. :)

NickF22

My app now opens with a page showing download progress- it didn't seem to be finishing so I pressed "Pause Download ". It crashed, and now when I open it says downloading 0MB / 0MB, doesn't do anything,and if I press Pause Download it crashes...

sid3windr

Same here. Thought it might have been my fiddling but doesn't look like it.

RikTheVeggie

Hmm, thanks for the info.  I don't know what's happening, I'll take a look when I get home as everything works fine locally.  I'll remove the app from the store for the moment so no-one else is impacted, and maybe I'll be able to re-upload the previous version tonight or over the w/e if I can't figure out a fix reasonably quickly.

NickF22

Further info if it helps, on my tablet this time:

I opened the app, it went to the download screen, and was like it was "topping up" a download - started at maybe 85% , maybe 260MB / 290MB? (VERY rough numbers, from memory)

I didn't cancel it, it finished, but closed (DIDN'T crash).

Then reopening it goes do download 0MB, and is stuck.

Oh and there is a system notification saying "Download finished".

RikTheVeggie

Thanks @NickF22, that does help.
Sounds like it's downloading the latest update (there was a 25MB patch file, plus 5MB app = 30MB download).  Hopefully it's just something daft like I've referenced the external data wrongly in the validation code (this is a PITA and very hard to test in advance of shipping to Play, as the app needs to be in the store before I can access the expansion files).
Still stuck at work unfortunately.. I'll try to take a look tonight.

sid3windr

Yea, I could have been a bit more specific. I also tried "delete data" for the app, and then upon restarting it still only needed a little bit of the 28xMB ... No crash here.

RikTheVeggie

Uploading a fix atm, should be deployed within a couple of hours. 

Somehow (don't know how) Google was configured to use an expansion file I had no idea about - probably a late night error.  The code was looking for version 88 whilst Google pushing down 90 - so the app would never start as it would never see the file it was looking for.

Should be fixed now (I hope..!)

NickF22

Looks good @RikTheVeggie - updated overnight, and starts up straight away.
Thanks again for the app, and the quick turnaround!

MattDawson

Sorry for the reboot, but MyBrickset isn't synching to the database correctly. I went to Milton Keynes as part of the LUG meet, and the app hadn't removed the sets I'd un"wanted" on my computer, and when I got back home only the blue base plate I'd purchased had been correctly added, but the rest was missing.

Thoughts/suggestions?

sid3windr

I also had a few issues where I marked some as "have it" but they weren't synced to Brickset. This was a while ago, I'm not sure what or why or when anymore, unfortunately...

Also, due to phone issues I totally forgot to check the brickwatch addition version mentioned above... Still need to do that!

RikTheVeggie

@MattDawson Not sure what's happening there.  Do you have the latest version installed?  Some people were having trouble syncing with brickset.com which I resolved about a week ago by reworking the network code to play nicer with the http certificate.

If you have the latest version but still having trouble syncing, please send me your log files (main screen | menu | send log files) - hopefully they'll show what's going wrong.

MattDawson

Weirdly, it appears it's manual sync that doesn't work. The automated sync on start-up worked fine when I tested it at home...

RikTheVeggie

Odd, I'll take a look at that (after I've figured out why the app is launching for some people!).  Thanks for the bug report :)

sid3windr

Possibly caused by my running a LineageOS 'nightly' (as they don't seem to do releases anymore) - I've seen this happen for a while but not always: when I search for a set number and press search, it sometimes happens the result pops up 3 to 8 times.

It makes the screen flash a bit until the last one is displayed, but it also means I have to press the back arrow 3 to 8 times before I get back to the search form.

And yes, I only tap once.... :-)

PS: that brickwatch link would be nice.. I assume I shouldn't use the apk you created long ago as this will downgrade the app..

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr - I think that only happens when the app is updating itself with a full copy of the db, I haven't been able to recreate it yet but people have reported that waiting a minute or two after installing an upgrade resolves the issue.  I'm still investigating and trying to implement a proper fix.

Not sure why the brickwatch link isn't in the latest version of the app, I'll have a go at adding it again tonight (when I'm home from work) and send you a link.

RikTheVeggie

@sid3windr - please have a look at http://otissoft.co.uk/mybrickset/bin/myBrickset-99-2.5.18.apk [4.8MB], this includes links for brickwatch again.  It should also have fixed the issue with the SetDetails screen popping up too many times.

@MattDawson - I couldn't find anything wrong with the Manual Sync functionality, but it doesn't always happen immediately - it asks Android to perform a sync ASAP but it's eventually up to the system to decide when to do so.  I'll take another look at this over the w/e just in case there's something I've missed, and feel free to LMK (and maybe send log files) if you still think there's an issue.

sid3windr

@RikTheVeggie I do now indeed see a brickwatch link, and it's working fine!

First time I searched for a set (assembly square) the set image flickered for a good 10 seconds...

And I think my sync is broken, too. I have 30356 marked as owned 1 on brickset,  but the app is saying 0, even after forced sync. Mailing you the logfile.

MattDawson

Email sent with the log files :)

RikTheVeggie

Thanks guys, I'll take a look when I get home from work (it's 8am in the morning and I've just got in the office!)

RikTheVeggie

The issues with the Manual Sync not working seem to be due to Google knowing better than everyone else and queuing up the sync requests to reduce network traffic (it prevents syncs happening too often, and batches them up with requests from other apps).  I'll look into converting how this sync happens so that it's done manually and immediately rather than relying on the sync service to decide when's a good time to run it.

After talking with sid3winder the sync was happening but the change wasn't showing up, this could be related to recent changes I made trying to fix the set flickering issue (the data's there, it just hasn't been published to the internal "content" db that drives the display).  

And I don't know what's going on with that flickering, my fix should have worked.  Back to the drawing board!

Have had a few users saying they're unable to launch the app (which was a pain to diagnose as it works fine whenever and wherever I test it), but I've been able to develop a fix so will be pushing that out this w/e along with a few other minor changes (mostly fixes to accommodate my using newer versions of 3rd party libraries).  Sorry for all the churn lately, I change one thing (updated my IDE from 2.x to 3.x) and there's a whole bunch of knock-on changes required which come with a whole set of issues!

sid3windr

Can't complain about an awesome free app you make in your spare time, man. These things happen and you're always on top of things very quickly, so thanks a lot for all of it!