Practice Log – Android version

I have been using the PracticeLog for a little over a year now and have found it to be very useful. However, there are several features that I never use:

  1. The list of pieces that I am practicing. This would be nice to keep up to date, but even with the “Same as Yesterday” button, I just don’t have the motivation to keep entering the data.
  2. The stopwatch and countdown. I haven’t been practicing in the same room as the computer, so it is not handy to have to turn on the computer both before and after practice time. Instead I have been using a stopwatch on my phone, or just my watch to time the practice and then separately enter the time.

I would like to use my Android phone, which I usually have on me, to record the practice time. To do that, I am going to create a web database and php accessors so that I can load and update practice time from the phone or computer. While doing this conversion, I am going to make a few changes:

  1. Remove the list of pieces practiced per day. It would make the database more complex and I never use the feature.
  2. Make the database multi-user. This will allow me to publish the application and Android app. I am not sure if that will ever happen, but the software has been useful for me, so it might be appreciated by others too.

This will be the first time I have made a multi-user web database, so I am debating how to handle security. I want each user to only have access to their own data, but don’t want the overhead of encrypting all the data.

After my experience with the DurationAlarm application, I suspect that the Android app will take most of the time. But all of the GUI elements that I will need are built in.

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