Post Project Notes

PhyCalc is now in the App Store

https://appsto.re/us/1Pg16.i

Evaluators - I can provide a download code for you

Day 19: The End.

Still nothing from Apple. I will update this post if I hear anything over the weekend. I think they are taking so long because the Watch released this week, and they are probably prioritizing those apps.

I have published the website. That can be viewed at phycalc.com.

I didn't end up making a video today, I might do that this weekend. I had a lot of ideas for the video, but I don't know if I could pull them off.

--Cole

Day 18:

I still haven't heard back from Apple.

Today I finished up the print fliers. I don't want to print anything until I hear back that my app was accepted. I may have to print them this weekend. Once I get them printed, I'll try to hang them up in various classrooms.

This is a rough version what they will look like:

I need to meet with Mr. Hwang tomorrow to talk about what is needed in my presentation. I also am going to film the video tomorrow. I have no classes, so I will have plenty of time.

--Cole

Day: 17

I still haven't heard back from Apple, but there's nothing I can do about that. I have checked off half of the items on my checklist for the week. What I have left to do is finish the video, make my presentation, and write my final reflection. Like yesterday, I don't have much to say as the tough part is through. Thanks for reading!

--Cole

Day 16: More Things

Today I did more of the finishing touches for my project. I finished up the coding for the website, I just need to get a domain name now.

I also started storyboarding ideas for the video, but I don't really have anything to show for that yet. Not many updates other than that for today.

--Cole

Day 15: PhyCalc Part Three

So with my app submitted to the app store, I can start with part the third and final part of my project which is marketing the app.

Today I started working on coding a website to tell people about the app and to provide support for current users. I got the majority of it finished. I still need to work the design out and get a domain name for it. I'll do both of those things tomorrow.

For the rest of the week I need to:

1. Finish Website
2. Design flyers
3. Come up with a promo video
4. Figure out what I am doing for my presentation
5. Write the final reflection

There's probably a lot of little things I am missing, but that's the vast majority.

-Cole

Day 14: It's Finished

Author's note: I forgot to publish this yesterday so here it is today.

Welp, I finished the app and sent it in to Apple today. It's up to them now if they think my work if sufficient for their standards. I added some last minute features that I thought could make it better. The first was adding a few new calculators. I have kinematic, waves, circular motion, torque, and mirrors coded into the app right now. The second 'feature' was a better way to organize calculators under the same category. For example, I had four kinematic calculators. What I did was put them under the same label in the tableview but I added a new view controller with a tab bar selector at the bottom. I think it works better like this, and it make the app a lot cleaner.

Here's a screenshot of that:

I don't know how long I will have to wait to to hear back, but hopefully early next week.

--Cole

Day 13: The Home Stretch

I am mostly finished with the app. Tomorrow I will be making sure everything works and adding more features if necessary.

To ensure that everything works properly, I'm going to try to find one of my old physics worksheets and work through it with the help of PhyCalc. If I get all the answers right, I will fully trust my app.

Other features I'm thinking about are:

1. More calculators
2. Better user error reporting
3. Might move around some of the buttons

At the end of all this, I will submit the app tomorrow. From my experience, this is the worst part of the process. I'm going to have to deal with all sorts of security stuff which I'm not looking forward to.

Day 12: Well, All is Not Well in Order

The title isn't completely correct, but I had to stop today because I somehow managed to create a button that crashes the app.


Today was a long day. I woke up at 9:00 and pretty much worked 12 hours straight. I took a few breaks, but I was getting so involved with it that I couldn't stop. Today, I finally felt confident enough to stop relying so heavily on YouTube and the rest of the internet for solving problems.

Now for the bad. I thought that I had everything planned out. I realized that for the kinematic equations, there is always two variable missing. Due to this, there is no way to figure out which one the user wants to solve for without any kind of input or selection by them. I though I would be able to do something about this, but I came up with nothing. I decided to bite the bullet and erase all my work (on the kinematics) and start over with divided sections. I didn't lose everything though, I still had all my knowledge (°u°).

Secondly, for some odd reason, I created a button that crashed the app. I have no idea why it does that. It is just a copy of another button (not a copy-paste, but similar functionality). I had to give up for the night because of it, maybe it will fix itself over night.

I am getting really close to finishing. I plan to add more features in subsequent versions, but I am finished for this project timeframe. On Friday I am going to have to submit the app to Apple for review. They usually take about a week to review it so I hope that it will be on the App Store by the end of next week. This leaves me a week where I'm not doing any programming on the actual app. I'm planning to some marketing for the app. I'll make a website where people can learn more about PhyCalc. I'm going to design some fliers and have them printed out. I'm also thinking about making some kind of video to go along with the app, but I'll think about that next week.

--Cole

Day 11: Well, All is Well in Order

Today I kept on working. I also occurred to me that I have never showed any pictures of my progress, so that's what I'll do today.

This first screenshot shows what the app will/does look like on my/the user's home screen. I already showed the icon design, so that's not new

This next screenshot is the LaunchScreen.  The LaunchScreen is what the user sees while the iPhone is launching the app.

The home screen looks a little bit different than what I had designed. There isn't any of the blue. This is the default color of a UITableView. I am trying to decide if I should change it or keep it. I think the grey keeps the app looking a lot cleaner, and keeps the entire UI more consistant.

This is the calculator page. I am still working on this. I didn't think about the keyboard being in the way of the user input and calculate button. I am probably going to have to implement a ScrollView to fix this.

This is where I am right now. I am exactly on schedule to be finished by the end of the week. I need to be finished this week so Apple has a change to review the app and hopefully not reject the app.

--Cole

Day 10: Bugs Everywhere

Ugh!! Being new to a programming language is not fun. The moment when  I think that I have something under control, something else goes awry.
This gif accurately portrays how I feel:

And when I do end up fixing it, I don't know how I did. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it's fixed, but I would like to know why.

 Other than bugs and compiling errors all is going well. I have the calculator portion of the app figured out, I just need to figure out how to deal with ViewControllers. I'm thinking about changing the design around a bit to make it easier (but who knows, it might make it harder).

So that's where I am right now.

--Cole

Day 9: Experimentation

Today I got a lot done. I first started of by making a calculator, just to test my newly acquired coding skills. Here's a screenshot of that:

No design thought was put into it, it was purely to test coding. This experiment also gave me a lot of valuable knowledge of what PhyCalc will be like.

After I did the calculator app, I started and finished the first prototype of the app. It only has a few of the features that I want when it's finished, but it's coming along.

--Cole

Day 6:

Today was kind of a slow day. I woke up to go to class, but when I got home I wasn't really feeling good about the project. I'm not regretting it in any way, it's just become big. Because of this I did a lot of thinking about it, an not much productive work. I did play around with some new code tricks that I learned. I tried to make some test apps that do different things like count up when a button in pressed. This sounds easy, but you have to deal with memory management, and a host of other things that wouldn't typically be thought about. I hope to pick up the pace tomorrow so I can be finished by next week.

--Cole

Day 5: PhyCalc - Part 2

Today I began working on the coding for the app. Before I could begin working, I had to watch a lot of tutorial videos. I have worked with Objective-C before, but nothing as big as what I am doing. It's going to take a while to get familiar with the language and all the functions. The good thing is that there are so many resources on the internet to help me.

Today I also downloaded Xcode and all the developer tools. This means that I became an official Apple Developer, so that's exciting.

I see myself doing the same thing for the next day or two while making practice apps along the way.

Day 4: No, I am your designer

The last day of design week. I'm really happy with what I came up with. I think making it will be very manageable. I woke up this morning ready to get this app finished. I think spending a whole week on design might have been a little bit too much, but I was able to iron out all the details which might stop me in the future. 

So getting on to what it looks like: 

Of course the edges will be rounded in accordance with Apple’s UI. I decided to go with this because it is simple yet meaningful.

This is the home screen, what the users will see when they launch the app:

And this is the calculator view: 

Day 3: April The First Be With You

Today was another productive day. I’m finalizing the design up (to be revealed tomorrow… get hyped!). In addition to finishing design, I figured out what equations are going to be supported in the initial release. 

Here’s an example of what I did today. These are equations for one dimensional motion. Doing this app is like taking a whole additional year of physics! 

I’m getting really excited about starting to code. I’ve always wanted to learn iOS programming, mainly because of reading stories about people getting rich, but that isn’t a bad thing. Knowing computers is a great skill to have no matter who you are, but I digress. 

This week has flown by. I guess the saying is true that “time flies when you are having fun.” Hopefully I continue to have fun over the next three weeks.

—Cole

Day 2: Or (the Expected Virtue of Design)

Today was a tough day for me. It hit me how on my own I am. I can tell that time management is going to be a hurdle for me tor jump over since it has always tripped me up. 

I arrived at school today to start the day with AP Comp Sci. Once I get coding, it’s going to be weird switching between Java (AP CompSci language) and Objective-C (iPhone language). Essentially all programming languages do the same thing, the tough part is learning syntax for each language. That’a what I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time doing over the next few weeks: learning syntax. Programming is as tough as you make it, and this project is going to challenge my skills.

I continued designing today. I mainly focused on the landing screen design today. I had to decide if I was going to go with a more custom look, which would take more time, or using a built in table, which would be quicker. I think I’m going to go with the built in table just for time’s sake. I had to scrap a lot of ideas today just because I wasn’t happy with how it looked. I’m trying to keep up with current design practices and trends while making it look good.

I haven’t decided on the icon yet, but I looked back on yesterday’s designs and I’m definitely going with the blue design. I am liking the multiplication style icon, unless I come up with something more clever.

I need to stay focused on getting the task done for the day, but I also have some more school work due in classes that I dropped (which I’m unhappy with) that I need to do.

Day 1: In the beginning

Like everyone else, today was an interesting day for me. I woke up this morning to a broken car. Having a 40 year old car, it was inevitable. I had to spend an hour waiting for a tow truck to come take it away.

After I figured that mess out, I went to the books store to see if there were any helpful books on design or iOS programming. I didn’t find anything exceptionally good, so  I went on my way to school.

Once I got to school, the room where Griffin and I had talked about working together in was locked. (We both needed a quiet place to work). Soon enough we got that sorted out. 

Then sat down at my computer (I’m going to be doing a lot of that over the next month) to figure out some design and color palates for the app. I found two that I’m split between. One has a lot of pastel colors, and the other is blues and whites. 

I took these colors and tried to figure out an icon to go with them. I worked out some ideas that I already had in my head and I worked with some new ones.

I’m leaning towards the blue palate, probably because I most familiar with it.

With everything considered, today was a good day. 

—Cole

1: Senior Project blog introduction

I was just introduced to the blogging platform that we will be using throughout the senior project process.

--Cole