2009 – Transdroid

Feature extravaganza

Ho ho ho, take a look at all the shiny new features that are present in the just-released Transdroid 0.13.0! Just in for your holiday shopping…

RSS feed support

Often websites expose an RSS feed for visitors to get news delivered right to them. Recently special torrent vieqs are becoming popular as well and luckily most of them actually are standardized. For example Final Gear, all about the Top Gear and Fifth Gear car shows, offer a feed for when new shows are available online.

Transdroid now supports such feeds! In your settings, add them using the URL and some personal name tag. Using the RSS menu option in the main screen a list of all your feeds will be shown. In the background it will check the number of unread items. Any new torrents available? Click the feed to get the full listing, after which adding them to your server is as easy as clicking the item you like! Every time you get into the listing the last item is remembered, so next time it can see again if any new torrents are available.

SSL support

As requested already a while back, Transdroid now finally supports SSL connections with your torrent client. All kudos go to q3aimi, who provided a full working code patch. See, the power of open-source software. It should work with self-signed certificates.

Filter 0KB/s transfers

Some people, especially those with many running torrents, like the list to be organized a little differently. One new way to filter the downloading and uploading lists is to enable the ‘Transfers >0KB/s only’ option from the ‘Filter list’ menu. All torrents that aren’t stopped or paused, but aren’t actively transferring data as well, will now show up in the inactive torrents list instead.

Overall server statistics

At the bottom of the screen Transdroid will now always show you the number of active downloads and uploads, as well as the total transfer speeds they consume. Going too fast…?

Transfer rate adjustment

Another feature requested by users helps you limit the total torrent transfer speeds. By selecting ‘Set transfer rates’ from the menu or touching the total statistics bar in the main screen, you can set the maximum upload and download torrent rates. Both values are in KB/s and you may use the reset button to cancel you fixed limits again. Works on all but Vuze for the moment (Vuze support will follow soon).

High-res icon

Finally, for all you lucky high-res (or rather, hdpi) device owners such as the Motorola Droid, the new version includes a nicer, more detailed icon. 🙂 (The other artwork will get high-res version later as well.)

New look and icon

When I started development on Transdroid back in May 2009, I stole Transmission‘s icon to feature my application. IT was an innocent choice since Transdroid would support nothing but that torrent client. Skip ahead 7 months and so much has changed since. Many new torrent clients and many new features were added. So for the app to get its own icon is really overdue already.

Glad to present you Transdroid’s new logo! It is right here next to you. The idea came from the gears in a transmission together with the obvious download arrow. So the logo, as well as the name, still hint at its Transmission-tight past. On the other hand, I think its a fresh start as well.

Although some comments in the Market already explained they miss the old icon, others seem to approve of it. I hope most of you will enjoy it. Leave comments here or twit me at Twitter.

Finally, if someone ever wants to download the new logo, here it is:
PNG logo — PNG icon — PNG tiny icon — PNG promo — PSD logo — PSD icon — PSD promo

Website problems

I am trying to get the site back online as soon as possible. Sorry for all the inconvenience the website downtime causes.

UPDATE: Most of the stuff is back online, like posts and pages. The install guides are still missing the images – this will be fixed soon as well. The translation tool should be working again. Missing something? Mail me about it!

New site, new release

Welcome to Transdroid’s new website: www.transdroid.org Glad you have found your way. The application is getting better and better and is also attracting more and more users. To fit this growing interest and more mature image, the logical next step was for the application to get its own domain name. Thanks so much to Travis, who provided the domain registration and hosting. The old blog will be there for a little longer, but only on this site you’ll find the latest updates and user support. All old posts and comments are moved here too.

More interesting for you as a users is that a new Transdroid version was just released! Version 0.12.1 had some nice updates, most of which were requested by users themselves. So what’s new?

Vuze (previously called Azureus) support. The most-used torrent client that wasn’t yet supported. You will need the XML over HTTP plug-in enabled in Vuze.
Swipe to switch. Switching between your server configurations now is even easier. Just swipe – or fling – your finger from left to right or right to left to switch to the next or previous configuration. No need to open up the menu.
Support for local .torrent file uploads. You will need a compatible file manager, such as OI File Manager. Hit the ‘add local .torrent file’ button in the torrent add screen to install. Other file managers may work, such as aFile when using the Send to… command.
Deluge support updated. Transdroid’s Deluge support is based on the not yet released 1.2 version. In practice this means that you will always need the latest SVN version. Transdroid is updated to reflect the recent (security) updates and should work again.
Updated translations, now including Romanian.

Get the new version from the market or download directly. More coming up!

Support Transdroid development

Even though I try to update and improve Transdroid often, there is always more to add and make it even better. Of course I will keep doing this, but you can help as well. What can you do?

Donate

Transdroid is free and open-source. Anyone can download it form the Android market or even directly from the web. If you are a Twitter follower you can get beta version too. But if you feel it saves you time (and hence money), maybe you would like to donate some to support future Transdroid development? You are free to pay whatever you like. I do have to pay 30 cents transaction costs though, so please make the amount higher than that. 😉 Hit the large Donate button at the right.

Provide webspace

Maybe you can’t miss any money, but have some connections with web hosts? Transdroid still needs it own domain name (I believe www.transdroid.org is still free) and some web space with a small amount of bandwidth. PHP and MySQL supported will be needed, but that’s about it.

UPDATE: This is taken care of. Thanks!

Become a developer

Transdroid is open-source which means everyone is free to get the Android source code and start coding new features. I tried to build everything using clear and open coding standards and extensively commented. You don’t have to be an experienced Android developer, as it really is pretty much standard Java. So if you want to build some new torrent client support like Torrentflux, Vuze or whatever is to your liking; checkout the SVN and get coding.

Translate

I am a native Dutch speaker and quite apt in English as well, but that’s about it. Currently Transdroid is already offered in German, French, Spanish and Italian. You can help as well! Do you speak another language fluently or want to update one of the languages already supported (especially Italian is old)? It’s as simple as getting the strings.xml file from the source code site. Use the English original in the ‘values‘ directory if your language wasn’t supported yet. Just send the translation to me via e-mail or use the issue tracker.

UPDATE: I have just finished a tool to translate Transdroid right form your web browser, which can be found right here.

Icon and artwork

At the beginng of Transdroid’s development, only Transmisison was supported as a torrent client. Since then, support was extended to 5 6 different apps already. The icon never changed though: it is still the Transmission icon I snitched used back then. So if you are a good designer, why not draw some nice icon and maybe some artwork as well? I don’t have any concrete specs but I guess it should do something with Android’s droid, torrents and maybe ‘remote’.

UPDATE: Please post any artwork and icon you have here on the issue tracker. Transdroid already has a new icon! Without the droid…

Spread the word

If none of the above apply, you can always spread the word to your friends, collegues and all other Android users. Maybe post some praise on Twitter or your blog?

Thanks for any help. I will try to reward all effort with an even more complete, useful, stable and attractive torrent remote app.

Better views at your torrents

The latest and greatest Transdroid has just been released to the market, which mostnotably comes with an options to filter your torrents per status. Four views are available with a simple button press, which will filter the torrent list for a better overview of what is going on. There is still a main view showing all your torrents, but you can also choose to only display downloading, seeding or inactive torrents.

Hope you like this new feature. If you have other ideas on how to Transdroid, feel free to leave a comment, or even open an issue for it.

Multi-server support

Not only was support for multiple servers a personal nice-to-have, but it was also requested by some of the Transdroid users. So I finally had the time to build this very nice feature, which is in the newly released 0.10.1. It is now very easy to switch between set-ups. One of the main benefits: when you come how and connect to your local WiFi, a simple tap on your LAN server configuration is enough to connect to your torrent app again. Here are some screenshots of the new functionality:

The new preferences screen shows all server configurations

Switching between server configurations is easy

And have you noticed that you can now not only search isoHunt, but BTJunkie and Mininova as well? I will build a web search feature in the near future.

New sites available, all with search results right inside Transdroid

Oh, and the nasty widget bug is also solved in this release. Sorry for any inconvience this may have caused. Hope the new features make up for it. 🙂

Want to follow Transdroid development and receive early updates? Join Transdroid on Twitter!

A quick overview of the Transdroid widget

Today I released the 0.9.0 version of Transdroid. It includes some bugfixes and an update for the Deluge daemon, but most importantly it now has a home screen widget.

It shows the status of all torrents combined: how many are downloading, at which speed and how long will it take to finish them all? The number of uploads and inactive torrents are shown as well. Finally, the Transdroid icon opens Transdroid and a refresh button is provided. To not drain your battery, the data is only updated when requested manually. Hope you like this brand new feature!

A side notice: since app widgets are Cupcake (Android 1.5) only, this is now the minimum required version. If you have any troubles with this, please let me know. Older versions are always available for download.

The user is always right

Le client est roi. The Transdroid userbase is still growing on a daily basis, having thousands of active installs on Android devices all over the world. But since there is always room for improvement, I regularly get new feature requests in the issue tracker. Although not all of them can be implemented, I am still trying to build in as much as possible. Most of the updates since my last ‘features’ blog post actually came from user requests. Here are the ones that made it to the new version:

rTorrent support (request 7)
Search term history (requested in a Market comment)
Starting and stopping of torrents, supported by uTorrent and rTorrent (request 11)
.torrent file uploads (currently only for Transmission) to handle password-protected torrent sites (request 29)
French and Italian translations (want to help? mail me a translated strings.xml)
Reverse sort order (requested in a Market comment)

Any requests yourself? Just submit them to the issue tracker! More to come.

Android remote torrent client comparison

UPDATE: I updated the feature table to reflect newer versions of the applications. (24 August 2010)

For some time now, there are four apps on the market that allow you to control your active torrents remotely. So how does Transdroid relate to its three competitors? Droiddog released a nice video review on all four. He tells only about the basic features, but thinks Transdroid and Torrent-Fu are the winners.

What he didn’t cover was the difference in features that the apps have. I have made a little feature comparison table for that. Hope I didn’t leave out any (let me know).

	Transdroid	Torrent-Fu	BarTor	Torrent Droid
Website	here	here	here	here
Price	Free (FOSS)	Free	$1.49	£1.00
Client support
Multiple profiles	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
uTorrent/BitTorrent	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Transmission	Yes	Yes	No	No
Vuze/Azereus	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
KTorrent	Yes	No	Yes	No
rTorrent	Yes	No	No	No
Deluge	Yes (1.2+)	No	No	No
Torrentflux-b4rt	Yes	No	No	No
Searching and adding
In-app search	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Torrent sites	9	2	1	Browser-only
Barcode scanning	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add via browser	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add local .torrent	Yes	No	No	Yes
Management
In-app listing	Yes	Yes	No	No
In-app management	Yes	Yes	No	Web-UI
Individual files	Yes	No	No	No
RSS feeds	Yes	No	No	No
Widget	Yes	No	No	No
Alarm service	Yes	No	No	No