Tag Archives: android

Python and Kivy for an Android app

For my make-up hack week I had a small number of short projects I wanted to try out and get some creative juices flowing. One project was to FINALLY write an Android app (using Python and Kivy) and get to the point where I felt I had a development pipeline for apps I might want to create.

Short version – I got some 3 year old Kivy code into an .apk and got it installed on my old Galaxy S4, and it works!

Skip to the end if you want some tips on what kivy/buildozer configuration worked for me.

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SD card recovery minor miracle

Another story of persistence and divine inspiration on a small scale making up for my foolishness.
I’m not a hardware guy, so sometimes I take it for granted that hardware will just work.  Earlier this year I got a new Samsung Galaxy S4 and pulled my 32 gig SanDisk SD card from my old phone to the new one.  Worked great for a long time, bunt a month or two ago it randomly complained that the SD card had been removed.  I assumed that it had come loose from the socket and just rebooted.  That worked.  It happened a few more times and I just restarted each time and it was fine.  Then once it came back and the S4 said it was blank.  I googlers for an answer and found similar complaints.  This time I took the card out and into my Win7 laptop and let it repair the card.  That worked.
At this point, I should have taken it as a bad sign and tried another card.
Son the blank thing happened more and more.  I was starting to resent the phone.  Then one day two weeks ago I couldn’t get it to reconnect even after restarting and reseating the card.  It was just reported as blank and the S4 offered to reformat it.  I tried it in multiple computers and other devices but the no luck.  My laptops built-in slot didn’t even cause a pop-up in Explorer.  So I contacted SanDisk and they said they don’t offer recovery services but they would replace the faulty card.  They recommended a service, but for 32 GB they charge $275.  A few snapshots and save games aren’t with that. 
So I tried playing around with it one more time before sending it in for replacement.  This time I got out a cheap USB SD card reader, which oddly enough gave a pop-up when inserted, though it still said it was unformatted.  I tried the demo version of ZAR, but it claimed the format was unrecognized.  Defeated, I thought I’d try the only thing left to do – I put it in the S4 and allowed it to reformat it. 
Well, the S4 did its attempt to reformat but then claimed it was blank.  So I thought I’d pull it to the laptop again and see of I could let ZAR try to recover files.  But this is the miracle – Windows recognised it and opened the folders!!!  So I quickly copied all the files off it! 
So persistence paid off, and now I can send the card in for a replacement (which will go in my Slate 7 because I’ve put a Kingston card in the S4 now).