A Mobile Development Kit for OCC Experimentation on Android with C++

Abstract

The rapid advancements in smartphone camera sensors, processing capabilities, and stable capture rates have further fueled research interest in this field. However, a significant barrier for engineers entering smartphone-based OCC is the requirement to develop systems using Kotlin, the primary language for Android development. Here, we describe an app that eliminates the need to use Kotlin and instead allows developers to implement the entire system in C++, a language commonly used in many fields. Our app structure accommodates developers of varying skill levels, allowing users to modify interface and receiver parameters, edit receptor module code, such as decoding algorithms, and/or create entirely new interface layouts if the user has experience in Kotlin. We tested the concept by designing codes in C++ for two common modulations: On-Off Keying (OOK) and Color Shift Keying (CSK). The transmitter signals were recorded through the app and successfully demodulated at slow data rates. The source code was designed modularly to simplify development and was released under a flexible free license, encouraging further advancements in OCC using smartphones. Our C++ coding approach could easily be applied to other modulations, thus involving more developers in OCC innovation and accelerating the adoption of these technologies.