The main new feature here, and the most requested, is the ability to sync your data across devices, quickly and easily. To do this, the app now backs up your data to your Google Drive account which most Android users will have by default.
If you are an existing user, the app will ask you to Connect to Google Drive:
Before starting, make sure you have an internet connection as Google Drive is a cloud based service. Press CONNECT and wait a few moments as the app attempts to connect you to Google Drive. Once connected you will be asked to choose an account and to give permission for the app to use Google Drive:
Select the Google Drive account you would like to sync your data to. Next the app will make its first back up of your readings to Google Drive, from then on it will make weekly back ups automatically.
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| Save -Success, your readings have been saved to Google Drive |
If you are a new user, the app will help you get set up on Google Drive in the Welcome Wizard:
Before starting, make sure you have an internet connection as Google Drive is a cloud based service. Press CONNECT and wait a few moments as the app attempts to connect you to Google Drive. Once connected you will be asked to choose an account and to give permission for the app to use Google Drive:
Select the Google Drive account you would like to sync your data to. If you are upgrading to the Pro version of the App, or may already have existing readings, press the Restore Readings button
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| Previous readings successfully retrieved. |
On the main menu, the help button has now been replaced with a Sync button
Press the Sync button to go to the new Sync Readings screen
This screen allows you to save readings to and retrieve readings from your Google Drive account.
To transfer your readings to another device, say from your Phone to your tablet:
- On your phone press SAVE
- Wait a few minutes for Google Drive to upload your data
- On your tablet, press the REFRESH button, check the date and time reported is when you did your save. You may need to press a few times as G Drive will take a few moments to load any new files.
- On your tablet, press RESTORE, the app will load all readings and sync them to your existing readings. New readings will be added and updated readings will overwrite your current existing ones.
- That's it, press back!
Other New Features
The Pro version of the app now lets you print out your reports:
If you don't have a printer, the report can be saved as a PDF file.
A few extra BMI stats have been added, so if you're BMI is 31.4, the report will show you the weight you need to be to achieve a BMI of 31, 30 and 29. This is handy when you need to set yourself a new weight goal.
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| Note the print icon, top right |
The app has had a lick of paint and now uses Material Design, so buttons are now borderless. The Pro version of the app has a sky blue color scheme and the standard apple blossom. You can still change the background color but not the toolbar colors.
The app no longer uses the SD-Card to back-up or transfer your readings, the reasons are:
- The app now uses Google Drive
- Android 6 (Marshmallow) requires explicit user permission to read/write to the sd-card
- Some devices do not have sd-cards
- The app now longer requires the permission to access your photos / music
- Transferring readings was a pain, I get a lot of emails asking for help.
Ads
Good news the banner ad now only appears on the chart. I've also placed a native ad in the middle of the report, these ads will scroll with the screen content and are less intrusive and harder to accidentally click. All ads are provided by Admob, a Google owned company. The pro version of the app is completely ad free.
Hope the diet goes well in 2017
Happy New Year
PDB
I have some readings from before I started using your app, in a different spreadsheet format. I could easily enough convert them and stick them on at the start of a CSV file saved by the app, and put it back into the app's google drive directory, with a suitable name (i.e. a name based on a more recent date than any the app has saved). Should that work OK for importing the older data (using the "restore" operation)?
ReplyDeleteHi John,
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late reply. Yes it should work if you get the formatting correct.
You can also import CSV data directly into the app via the Edit screen, press the menu button and select import readings. You can copy and paste you data onto the form.
Note about the data format:
You can import and export your data via the menu on the Edit screen. The data is presenteded as text in a comma separated values (CSV) format for compatibility with spreadsheets.
The imported readings are merged with the readings in the apps database, if any two readings have the same date, the imported reading will overwrite the one in the database.
When importing data, please ensure the format of the data is similar to:
92.50,2013-07-04 16:24:35,lovely day
Weight is 92.50kg, date is July 4th 2013, time is 4:24:35pm and the comment is lovely day.
Please note that weights are expressed in kilograms, to convert to pounds multiply by 2.20462.
Hope this helps
Best Regards
Mark
Love this app but have one suggestion. Since many digital scales give weight in 0.2 lb granularity, it would be nice to have a setting that would change the increment to other than 0.5 lb.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback Mike, I'm hoping to revamp the app later this year.
Delete