Installation and usage screencast

Even though I believe the Transdroid is pretty self-explanatory, it might be nice to see the installation and usage process in action. The next video shows how easy it is to install Transdroid on your own Android device and shows some basic features of the app as well. (When the cursor is out of the visible area, I’m hitting the menu or Back button.)

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4537781 w=320&h=480]

Maybe this helps some people out or convinces you to give the app a try.

Turning to cupcake

After the buzz about cupcake, or just Android 1.5 as it’s officially called, it is finally being rolled out to regular users around the world. My G1 just got its over-the-air update today, actually. Time to test Transdroid of course!

Luckily, everything works fine without a single change. Still, I upgraded the source code to the new SDK development tools and later on I might focus more on newer, 1.5-specific features. For now there are some improvements for all platforms.

Some bugs are fixed, for example searching from the search results window (maybe you mistyped something). More importantly rotating your device’s screen doesn’t result in a possibly long new fetch of torrents on your server. And pausing, resuming and removing of torrents feels quicker by changing the list immediately. Although these aren’t technically performance improvements, the user interface will feel a little more responsive. And now that even G1 cupcakes (optionally) have an auto-rotate using the accelerometer, that’s good news.

The new version can be downloaded from this site of course. It’s called 0.6.0 and looks something like this:

True progress (bars)

Just release; the new Transdroid version 0.5.2. Besides some minor bug fixes, it has these improvements:

  • Better progress bars. Not only do they take up less screen space and have nice (and meaningful) colours – just like the Transmission web interface – but they also give a better indication of the real progress. Including on incomplete paused torrents.
  • Resuming and pausing of all torrents now works for µTorrent as well.
  • Adding of torrents via URL works again.
  • Better error reporting. It should be able to recognise some common errors – like entering wrong credentials – and give you a nice message about it. Could still be improved though.
  • Some search result settings introduced. You can set the number of results and the type of sorting.
  • Shows you the Transdroid version number you are using in the title bar. 🙂

I believe this gets really close a a first non-beta version. Thanks to the testers so far. Please let me know if Transdroid works for you or if you’re missing any features.

µTorrent users, meet Android

Sure, I always use Transmission myself. But there are so many happy Windows users as well and by far their most popular BitTorrent client is µTorrent. Happily enough, it has a web interface and just like Transmission, it supports remote calls. Well, then why can’t Transdroid support the µTorrent app as well?

Just released, Transdroid version 0.4.0, with beta support for µTorrent! It currently supports just the features that were already there for Transmission: viewing, pausing, resuming and removing of torrents on your server and, of course, direct adding of new torrents via URL or isoHunt-powered search.

Also good news for Transmission users: several fixes were made, including working pausing and resuming of torrents.

Please feel free to give it a try by downloading and installing the new beta on your Android-powered phone. And let me know what you think of it, of course.

Meet Transdroid

This is the blog for Transdroid: a Transmission bittorrent client for Android. What?

Transmission
Transmission is a bittorrent application that is easy, fast and free. It runs on Linux and Mac, and is the default torrent client on Ubuntu. It can run as stand-alone application, but more interesting as a daemon on a server that allows access via a web interface and other remote applications.

Android
Google Android is an open platform for mobile devices. Currently the T-Mobile G1 is the only publically available Andforid-powered phone (apart from the ADP for developers), but more are coming. It is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone.

Meet Transdroid
Transdroid is a remote client for your Transmission daemon running on a server. It can show the active torrents, pause, resume or remove them and new torrents can be added via URL or as an extra via an isoHunt-powered search.

The application is currently in development. It is open-source and free. The developer website is at http://code.google.com/p/transdroid At the moment a beta version can be downloaded, but expect bugs to pop up.

For now, let’s conclude with some screen shots: