Integrate the Ambient Light Awareness feature using Huawei Awareness kit in Android (Kotlin)

Awareness Kit

Huawei Awareness Kit provides our application to obtain information such as current time, location, behavior, audio device status, ambient light, weather and nearby beacons. Using this information we can get an advantage over user’s current situation more efficiently and can manipulate data for better user experience.

Introduction

In this article, we can learn about the functionality of Ambient Light Awareness. Ambient light sensor is a photodetector that is used to sense the amount of ambient light present, and appropriately dim the device’s screen to provide lighting effect effectively to user.

Requirements

1. Any operating system (MacOS, Linux and Windows).

2. Must have a Huawei phone with HMS 4.0.2.300 or later.

3. Must have a laptop or desktop with Android Studio, Jdk 1.8, SDK platform 26 and Gradle 4.6 installed.

4. Minimum API Level 24 is required.

5. Required EMUI 9.0.0 and later version devices.

How to integrate HMS Dependencies

1. First register as Huawei developer and complete identity verification in Huawei developers website, refer to register a Huawei ID.

2. Create a project in android studio, refer Creating an Android Studio Project.

3. Generate a SHA-256 certificate fingerprint.

4. To generate SHA-256 certificate fingerprint. On right-upper corner of android project click Gradle, choose Project Name > Tasks > android, and then click signingReport, as follows.

Note: Project Name depends on the user created name.

5. Create an App in AppGallery Connect.

6. Download the agconnect-services.json file from App information, copy and paste in android Project under app directory, as follows.

7. Enter SHA-256 certificate fingerprint and click Save, as follows.

Note: Above steps from Step 1 to 7 is common for all Huawei Kits.

8. Click Manage APIs tab and enable Awareness Kit.

9. Add the below maven URL in build.gradle(Project) file under the repositories of buildscript, dependencies and allprojects, refer Add Configuration.

10. Add the below plugin and dependencies in build.gradle(Module) file.

11. Now Sync the gradle.

12. Add the required permission to the Manifestfile.xml file.

Let us move to development

I have created a project on Android studio with empty activity let’s start coding.

In the MainActivity.kt we can create the business logic.

Create separate class LogView.kt to find the logs.

Create separate object Utils.kt to find the barrier settings.

In the activity_main.xml we can create the UI screen.

Demo

Tips and Tricks

1. Make sure you are already registered as Huawei developer.

2. Set minSDK version to 24 or later, otherwise you will get AndriodManifest merge issue.

3. Make sure you have added the agconnect-services.json file to app folder.

4. Make sure you have added SHA-256 fingerprint without fail.

5. Make sure all the dependencies are added properly.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learnt about the functionality of Beacon awareness. Ambient light sensor is a photodetector that is used to sense the amount of ambient light present, and appropriately dim the device’s screen to provide lighting effect effectively to user.

I hope you have read this article. If you found it is helpful, please provide likes and comments.

Reference

Awareness Kit — Ambient Light Awareness