Droid Caddie 1.0 Help

Introduction

Droid Caddie is a full-featured program to be used in your android phone to record all scores during golf play, and to show and analyze the game results on the screen. Using the integrated GPS of android phones, it will allow any player to quickly view the distance to the center of the next green, and the distance made by the recent strokes, allowing you to select the best club for the next hit.
All information about courses, players and rounds is stored locally in your phone in an SQL database, so past played rounds can be shown on the screen and the results analyzed. No need to register in any remote web. Just buy the product and use it forever.
It can keep a detailed scorecard of up to four players, view your position in the course, calculate statistics for your current and past games, export the results to a file, a Google-Earth KML file or even send them to your friends by e-mail. It even includes a green-slope measure system so you’ll no longer have an excuse for missing a putt!

Main program features:

• Keep the score for up to four players simultaneously.
• Online view your current position on the map.
• Zoom-in & zoom-out to view the details you need.
• Rotate the map, keeping the hole flag on the top of your screen, or keep standard north orientation to meet your needs.
• Use it in portrait or landscape mode.
• Record the location and distance of every stroke for online reviewing in your phone screen.
• Easy to use screen, allows application to be manage with a single finger.
• An even simpler mode is available, in case you don’t want the map to be permanently shown.
• If available, review the current distance to the center of the next green.
• All data is stored in an internal SQL database in your phone. No need to be online to review it. All the information is in your hand.
• No subscription service is needed. Once you pay, use DroidCaddie forever!.
• Get statistics about current round, like putts per hole, or distance by club type.
• Display past games statistics for current hole, so you can track your performance.
• Use yards or meters, just changing an option.
• Rounds can be sent by email to all players or friends.
• Round can be exported to a KML file, allowing you to review all the hits in Google Earth.
• View hole graph.
• Annotate any hole, modifying the hole description to reflect your own notes for next rounds.
• DroidCaddie can be used even if there is no GPS information about the course’s holes. The only thing you miss is the distance to the center of the green. Moreover, it is very simple to add that information for the next round: simply use the Flag is current GPS position menu option for storing new information in the database.
• Easily get new courses from the web.
• Create your own courses easily: from your phone, from an external XML file or from a KML file.
• Share your courses with others with the export course to XML option.
• Using accelerometer capabilities, DroidCaddie will let you measure all green slope angles. No more putts missed because of wrong estimations. Please note that the use of measuring devices is currently forbidden in most golf courses.

Players

This menu option gives a list of all available players. Initially, the program has two demo players:

For doing real golf playing, you will need to create a new golf player, by selecting "New Player" or pressing the MENU key and selecting the option. All the information needed is the player’s name, handicap and sex.

Any user can easily be deleted with the "Delete Player" option or keeping your finger on it and wait for the context menu to appear. Be careful, though: all round information for that user will also be deleted.

Courses

This option gives access to the courses stored in the database. Initially, the system creates some demo courses for you:

Just click in one course of the list, in order to view course detail:

You can view the course details, and optionally edit it. For viewing each hole detail, press the ’view holes’ button:

To edit a hole, just select the MENU option or keep your touch in the hole image until the context menu "Open Hole" appears. Then you’ll see the hole details in two steps:

Here is the information needed for each hole:

• Hole name
• Hole distance, in meters or yards (optional)
• Hole Par
• Hole Handicap (optional)
• Hole image. It can be an image file or an URL from the internet describing the hole. See the sample courses for reference. (optional)
• Hole description, in plain text. (optional)
• Optionally, Center of the green GPS coordinates .

To create a new course, there are some options available. See the chapter "Adding a new course" later on this help.

Rounds

This option will give you a list of currently stored rounds.

From here, you can:

• Deleting them, using the MENU option.
• View one of those historical rounds, just selecting it.
• Create a new one, selecting "New Round" or with the MENU option.

Live Mode

Here a sample live mode round screen is shown:

As you can see, a lot of information is shown: hole map, hole distance, par, handicap, current score, etc...

If a GPS is available, the current distance to the hole’s center of green is updated at the top right.

The usage is quite simple.

Every time the player hits the ball, he touches the screen for one of these two buttons:

• For a new stroke.
• For a new putt.

Exit the Live Round screen with the BACK key.

Review Past Games

When switching off "live mode", the system will stop following the current GPS position and will show on the screen the stored hits, for offline review at any time. Here is a sample screenshot:

Measure Green Slope

Selecting this option from the "Other" Menu, the following screen is displayed:

Just put your phone on the green floor, with the top aiming the hole and you’ll get a precise measure of current slopes.

Scorecard

A round scorecard is automatically generated with the "Show Scorecard" key that generates a typical golf scorecard:

Statistics

From the round detail screen, pressing the menu key is possible to access the "View Statistics" option that gives a complete screen with several stats, including putting performance and average driving distance (MENU + Other Menu + View Statistics).

Here is a sample screen:

Alternatively, you can view the stats that the currently selected player performed in the currently selected hole. Go to MENU + Other Menu + View Hole History and get a screen like:

Exporting your Round and/or Course

Once you have finished the round, it can be exported in several ways:

• As a text file, to be later viewed or transferred to a PC.
• As an email, to any address and directly from your phone.
• As a .KML file, to be later imported into Google Earth.

Just select the proper options from the Export Menu.

Additionally, a newly created course (for example, with updated GPS information for the greens) can be exported as an .XML file, for convenience or sending it to another players.

Options

• "Default units" for selecting your preferred length unit, yards or meters.
• "Default live interface" for switching between standard and simple interfaces when going live mode.
• "Keep Screen Always On" if you want droidcaddie to prevent your screen for going off. Use with care, as it can drain your battery
• "Rotate Map automatically to keep hole on top". Setting it to yes, will make map to automatically try to keep your current position in the bottom, while showing hole flag in screen top. In order to do that, it will rotate and zoom the map as needed.
•   button to completely clean the SQL internal database.
•   button to load the demo players and round into the database.

Adding a New Course

There are several ways to add a new course to your phone:

• Download a course from www.droidcaddie.com
• Download a course from another URL
• Create and load an XML file
• Manually create a course directly from the program

XML syntax for a new course

For creating a new course in the database, one option is to provide an xml file with all course holes information. The syntax is quite simple. Here is part of a sample file:

<Document>
 <Course>
	<name>Pebble Beach Golf Course</name>
	<description> The famous golf course
	</description>
	<country>USA</country>
	<state>California</state>
	<holes>18</holes>
	<par>72</par>
	<Hole>
		<name>Hole 1.</name>
		<description>Take aim at the right..
		</description>
		<par>4</par>
		<handicap>8</handicap>
		<distance>376</distance>
		<units>yards</yards>
		<image>http://www.pebblebeach.com/images/golf/coursetour/map_pbgl_01.gif</image>
		<flag>
			<longitude>-82.02355242387507</longitude>
			<latitude>33.50443307521631</latitude>
		</flag>
	</Hole>
        ... Rest of 17 holes information...
</Course>
</Document>

To Do

There are several features still to be added to the program, like:

• More playing statistics.
• Allow to customize player information with photos
• The ability to suggest a club, based on previous performance
• Improve program options, like colors, fonts, preferred names, etc...
• Allow cooperation between players using XMPP
• And many others!

About

Droid Caddie was made by G.Martin. Visit www.droidcaddie.com for more details.

(c) droidcaddie.com 2009.