Category: Introduction

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.

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

Even though I believe the Transdroid is pretty self-explanatory, it might be nice to see the installation and usage process in action. The next video shows how easy it is to install Transdroid on your own Android device and shows some basic features of the app as well. (When the cursor is out of the visible area, I’m hitting the menu or Back button.)

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4537781 w=320&h=480]

Maybe this helps some people out or convinces you to give the app a try.

This is the blog for Transdroid: a Transmission bittorrent client for Android. What?

Transmission
Transmission is a bittorrent application that is easy, fast and free. It runs on Linux and Mac, and is the default torrent client on Ubuntu. It can run as stand-alone application, but more interesting as a daemon on a server that allows access via a web interface and other remote applications.

Android
Google Android is an open platform for mobile devices. Currently the T-Mobile G1 is the only publically available Andforid-powered phone (apart from the ADP for developers), but more are coming. It is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone.

Meet Transdroid
Transdroid is a remote client for your Transmission daemon running on a server. It can show the active torrents, pause, resume or remove them and new torrents can be added via URL or as an extra via an isoHunt-powered search.

The application is currently in development. It is open-source and free. The developer website is at http://code.google.com/p/transdroid At the moment a beta version can be downloaded, but expect bugs to pop up.

For now, let’s conclude with some screen shots: