MODE Integration Guide for data collection on Android devices

The MODE smartphone library (libmode) provides a complete, out-of-the-box solution for mobility data collection via smartphones. It is built as an autonomous component that can easily be integrated into third party apps. For the standard use-case (trip data collection) the library can be integrated into existing Apps with little effort:

The most recent version of the MODE library will be provided by AIT upon request.

You will also be granted Git access to https://gitlab.ait.ac.at/energy/commons/smartsurvey/android/smartsurvey_demo_app/ which hosts a very basic demo app, showing how to use the MODE library.

Step 1: Add the library to the App as a build dependency

The library can be added to the App by adding a corresponding dependency to the build. The following example shows how to add libmode to the build.gradle of an Android App.

We will provide the library with enough meta-data according to the Maven standard. When putting the library into your ~/.m2/repository/ folder, you can add the dependency like this:

dependencies {
    implementation 'at.ac.ait.mode:libmode:2.0.6'
}

Of course, you can also just copy the libmode.jar file to a libs folder in your project, and add the dependency like this:

dependencies {
    implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
}

Step 2: Initialize the library and start data collection

The library needs to be initialized before it can start recording data: 

private void initLibMode() {
    Context ctx = getApplicationContext();

    Mode.initialize(ctx);

    // Optional: allow data uploading via cellular network (otherwise data only gets uploaded when on WiFi)
    Mode.getConfigurationEntry(Configuration.CONFIG_METERED_UPLOADING_ALLOWED).setBooleanValue(ctx, true);

    // set Backend Server
    Mode.setBaseServerURL("http://localhost:8080");

    // Set OAUTH2 token manually
    // This will be sent to the backend service on each request
    Mode.setAuthorizationToken("MY_OAUTH2_TOKEN");

    // Start
    Mode.startSurvey();
}

Note that we need to ask first for permission to access the location. (ANDROID_PERMISSION_ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION). Only when this is granted, we should initialize the library as in the example above. The provided demo app shows how to handle this.

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