Saturday, May 30, 2009

mBabyTracker (mmm-bĕhbĕh-trakuh)

What is it?

There is a lot of downtime when you are on paternity leave. So, I took the opportunity to learn a bit about mobile software development. I started with wanting to write for the iphone, but quickly found out that I needed an iphone and a mac to do it correctly. So I settled for the blackberry, since Reba and I both have one.

What I came up with is: mBabyTracker. Predictably, this is a silly mobile and internet application that tracks things for our newborn baby Isabel. Specifically, it tracks her awake time, sleeping, pooping and eating.

Here's how it works:

1. baby does something, in this case: poop.

2. Reba opens mBabyTracker on her blackberry, clicks “baby poops” and then “submit”.

bbt1bbt2 bbt3 bbt4  

3. mBabyTracker sends the information up to my server at www.mBabyTracker.com where it is stored in a database.

4. At any time she wants, she can go to www.mBabyTracker.com and view a historical chart that shows when Isa was awake, asleep, eating or pooping.

bbtfinal

5. Notice the new little brown star!

 

How did I build it?

For the blackberry development I used the RIM Blackberry JDE and handset simulators, and Java.  For the web server it’s good old Vbscript and T-SQL hosted by Gearhost, a nice cheap little hosting service I use.  The reports are displayed in a cool flash based charting tool called Fusion Widgets.  The whole thing was free, except for the hosting cost $20/month I was paying anyway, and the one time Blackberry cert registration, which was also $20.

 

Is this important?

NO!  There are lots of baby tracking websites out there: www.trixietracker.com is a good one for example.  I just thought it would be fun to learn how to write stuff for the blackberry and Reba was having a hard time remembering how the baby’s sleeping pattern has been.


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