Transdroid showing active downloads

Manage your torrents from your Android device with Transdroid. All popular clients are supported, including µTorrent, Transmission, rTorrent, Vuze, Deluge and BitTorrent 6. You can view and manage the running torrents and individual files. Adding is easy via the integrated search, RSS feeds or the barcode scanner. Monitor progress using the home screen widget or background alarm service.

Synology NAS support

May 15th, 2013 by Eric Kok 4 comments »

One of the longest standing feature requests in the issue tracker was to add support for Synology NAS‘ Download Station. With many thanks to Erwan Loisant I can now finally close this issue, because any Download Station 3.40 or newer can now be accessed by Transdroid. Obviously it doesn’t support the full feature set like rTorrent or Transmission, but the basic stuff works great. Many, many thanks to Erwan for the excellent code!

Quite some users has issues with links to torrents that Transdroid directly tried to add to the server (by sending the URL). This isn’t compatible with sites that use authentication, notably private trackers. I’ve decided to remove handling of http torrent links at the moment. This means an extra click (on the downloaded .torrent file) for users of public sites, but it’s the lesser of the two evils I suppose. By the way, if you get ‘Can’t read .torrent file’ messages, close Transdroid fully (with the back button or slide the running app thumbnail) and try again.

Also I would like to make public that I am working on a new, improved UI for Transdroid. So don’t expect much updates to the current version, instead I’ll let you now when there’s a new alpha release. I’ll post a screen shot soon.

Community contributions

January 17th, 2013 by Eric Kok 17 comments »

Thanks to some excellent contributions from the community (yay for open source!) a new version is available that brings some much requested additions. For rTorrent users Tom Briden made some additions such as deletion of data on removing a torrent, viewing labels (with ruTorrent’s plugin) and showing the real time a torrent was added. Also by him is a new filter feature for the main torrent lists. Finally, many thanks to all continues efforts form the translators. All languages have been updated.

Keep up the work everyone and the next version will be even better than this 1.1.10 release!

BitComet and more

September 2nd, 2012 by Eric Kok 17 comments »

Check out the new release, version 1.1.7, which includes many bug fixes and small(er) improvements, plus all new BitComet support and improved labels. Thanks for contributions by Sergey (SeNS) and Alexey Rogovoy. The power of open-source, baby!

You should get a notification when starting Transdroid – or get it directly from the Google Code site.

Top speed boxes and updates

March 13th, 2012 by Eric Kok 10 comments »

Just released: version 1.1.4 of Transdroid. This update foremost brings an update service that automatically checks for new versions of Transdroid or the search module. Runs on app startup or once a day. You will no longer miss out of bug fixes or new features. If you – for the last time manually – upgrade to 1.1.4 using transdroid.org/latest, you just might get a cool notification to upgrade to search module verison 1.6, which brings The Pirate Bay fixes and a brand new Demonoid adapter. Thank Gabor Tanka of the great tTorrent app for that!

Also added is native support for SeedStuff seedboxes. Get one of their great servers and you’ll enjoy a Transdroid setup process that’s as easy as giving your server and user name and your password.

SeedStuff provides affordable quality seedboxes! SeedStuff is a service company, therefore we think that customer support is our #1 priority. We put our customers above all else and try to make your experience with us as simple as possible. We allow multiple methods of contacting support so you can pick how best suits your needs!

A great choice if you’re looking for a super fast seedbox, just as the other two seedbox providers that are supported natively in Transdroid: SeedM8 and Xirvik, of which the last has received upgraded support for the new shared rTorrent servers.

Active… and improved!

February 22nd, 2012 by Eric Kok 34 comments »

Yup, Transdroid is still going strong… with a new release! Transdroid 1.1.3 can now be downloaded and brings you many, many bugfixes as well as a new active torrents view filter (both seeding and downloading), improve Transmission turtle mode, Shazam song share catching and (custom) coloured LED blinking on notifications!

Get it directly from transdroid.org/latest or view the full change log.

New release, now with tablet UI

January 19th, 2012 by Eric Kok 12 comments »

Freshly released at the Google Code site (or directly from transdroid.org/latest). It includes a bugfix for Transmission 2.42 or newer installs, but more notably an updated interface that scales to all phones and tablet screens. There are definitely some UX issues and possibility for improvement is big, but I didn’t want to wait longer with a new release.

New Transdroid tablet UI

Also just released is a small update to the Torrent Search library (directly available at transdroid.org/latest-search) to version 1.4. It has a small improvement to get The Pirate Bay’s .torrent links over the magnet links, while they’re still available.

Let me know about bugs you find in the issue tracker, so I can fix them for a next release. Transdroid development might be slow these days, but far from dead. ;)

Techpost: Move to Mercurial

December 15th, 2011 by Eric Kok 4 comments »

This is a quick message to all (potential) developers interested in Transdroid: the main code base, including the Android app and the Torrent Connect library, have been moved to the Mercurial source control system. This will make it much easier to fork and contribute to the project.

Get your hg tool out and: hg clone https://code.google.com/p/transdroid/

Note, too, that both the android and lib projects as well as the required external ActionBarSherlock library are now in the default repository. Want to read more about contributing to the project? Read our code contributions wiki page.

Pulled from the Android Market, remains available

June 22nd, 2011 by Eric Kok 49 comments »

I have just received an e-mail from Google that Transdroid, both the free and donate version, have been pulled form the Android Market. This is due to apparent violations in the content policies of publishing in the Android Market:

This is a notification that the application, Transdroid Torrent Manager with package ID org.transdroid has been removed from Android Market due to a violation of the Developer Content Policy. Please review the Content Policies and Business and Program Policies before you create or upload additional applications.

Note that Transdroid has been available for around 2 years on the Android Market. During this time there have been over 400.000 users who downloaded the app, who rated the app with a very high 4.6 stars average. Also, the Torrent Search module connecting to news feeds of sites that link to trackers by which media content can be obtained is still available.

I have requested an explanation on the specific reasons behind the removal of the app, to which I will post any follow-ups here. Until a hopefully soon reappearance it is possible to download Transdroid directly from this site or even get the full source code, hosted at Google Code, as you like, under a GPLv3 license.

Thanks to all Transdroid users for their support and enthusiasm. Let me be clear that I am happy to build a version for the Android Market that does satisfy their policies and can still help thousands of happy BitTorrent users around the world. If you feel the same way and can spare a donation, please consider a PayPal donation.

Update: Transdroid’s removal from the Market has been covered by sites such as Slashdot and TorrentFreak. Irony: Google hosts Transdroid’s code and Google awarded the app with a free phone.

Update: I have asked Google for reinstatement of the app on the Android Market. Torrent Search has been removed from the Market and a new version of Transdroid, stripped from the search and ezRSS features, has been mailed to them.

Dear Android Market Team,

Attached you will find an updated version of Transdroid. I kindly ask to consider reinstating Transdroid Torrent Manager on the Android Market by evaluating this new version. Since I have not received any details regarding the exact violations with the Android Market Content Policies, I have made the assumption that the violations applied to searching for media (as provides by internet sites and the now-removed Torrent Search application). This functionality has been removed.

Thank you for your consideration and hope to hear back regarding the reinstatement (or additional problems with the content policies) soon.

Regards,
Eric Kok
2312 development

The new version can be downloaded from the Google Code project website. Google is fully entitled to set rules for their own application market and I hope to yet again comply with these in the new stripped-down version.

Update: Feature on AndroidGuys, too. And Android Police. And Planet Android. And Digg. And Geek.com. And others…

Update: Google replied!

Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response and appreciate the opportunity to review your appeal regarding the suspension of your application from Android Market. After an investigation, we affirm our initial decision and will not be reinstating your original application at this time.

If your developer account is still in good standing and you would like to upload a new, compliant version of this application to Android Market, please apply the following Content Policy guidelines to future releases:

[zip]

We are unable to reinstate applications that have been suspended due to policy violations. Please upload a new instance of the application which complies with Android Market Policies and Guidelines.

I am considering uploading a new Transdroid Lite version without torrent search and ezRSS feeds. The full version will, of course, remain available from this site.

On ads, open-source and Transdroid development

April 19th, 2011 by Eric Kok 3 comments »

As most of you Transdroid users have noticed I experimented the last few months with advertisements in the non-donate version. To be honest I never liked them myself and in a final attempt to make something out of this I changed ad provider last week. Well, the results were pretty obvious. Since MobFox, that was the new provider, requires to read your phone’s unique ID users littered the Market comments with bad reviews, low star ratings and e-mails asking why. So I removed them.

Transdroid is, and will always be, open-source and free to use. If you love Transdroid, please consider donating by buying the donate version form the Market or making a direct PayPal donation. It keeps Transdroid development going.

Transdroid has become a mature product but I will keep on fixing bugs, tweaking the UI, adding small features and providing support for (new) users.

I’ll end with a word on 2312 development’s newly release app ‘Control Panel for cPanel’. If you own a web server that uses the cPanel tool to manage files, e-mail, domains, etc. then get the free or donate version of the app from the Android Market.

Techpost: Debugging against a virtual machine Android

January 26th, 2011 by Eric Kok 2 comments »

A small technical writeup here about a nice Android development issue I just found out: it’s possible to use an Android 2.2 x86 virtual machine as debugging device for Android development.

First of, why? I often find debugging against a real device doesn’t suit my needs. I have to switch to different devices too often, for one. Testing witwith the SDK emulator works fine, especially to test different configurations. It can be slow, though, in particular when connected to a debugger. A new option – one I just realised might just be possible – is debugging against a virtual machine instead. Depending on the software and your hardware it often even bypasses your host OS. Here is what I did.

Head to the Android x86 project website and download their Android 2.2 generic purpose ISO file. Next, open your VirtualBox or VMWare Player software and create a new virtual machine. Use the downloaded ISO file as startup/install mount. VMWare said to me it’s a FreeBSD system and I accepted this choice. I did set the HDD to 2GB (which is too much, actually).

Start up your new virtual machine and install it locally. Now I’m not sure you can create the needed partitions here using the installer (I messed around a little with the partitions manually first) but I believe you can. Don’t forget to let it create a virtual SD card as well. Now restart and Android should start just fine!

Now open the browser to see if you’ve got network. I set the virtual machine to use NAT mode. Everything okay? We need to find the IP of your device. Use Alt+F1 to open a terminal in the virtual machine and in this Busybox shell enter ‘ifconfig eth0′. This is the IP that adb will connect to. Hit Alt+F7 to go back to Android. Open a terminal on your host computer and run ‘adb connect ‘. It should say ‘connected to :5555′ now. If not, try killing and starting your adb server. If it does connect it still doesn’t necessarily show up in ‘adb devices’! Don’t worry. Try to push a file and see if it works – it should.

Finally start Eclipse or whatever you use and start debugging your app! (Don’t forget to allow application installs from external sources in Android.) Pretty cool huh? Note: I just tested this on my Ubuntu 10.10 machine with VMWare yet.

Next time I’ll write about Transdroid again, promise! :-) Did I say a new release was coming soon?